Cast in Honor (Chronicles of Elantra, #11)(145)

“I should hope not.” Helen’s voice was not accompanied by her Avatar.

I do not think I will be allowed entry without your direct intervention. Which made it pretty clear where Helen’s physical representation actually was. Kaylin moved, crossing the floor and the halls to reach the stairs almost before she took the time to think. The small dragon flew from the left side of the pillow—his de facto perch for much of Kaylin’s convalescence—to her shoulder; he wrapped his tail lightly around her neck.

Squawk.

Her home was not a place she’d ever expected to see the fieflord. Home wasn’t a place she’d ever intended to invite him. But she didn’t want Helen to reduce him to ash or send him to another dimension, either. They’d gone through a lot to actually bring him home.

Which was not, of course, his experience of events. He had lost a month to the defense mechanisms of Castle Nightshade. He had not lost decades—if, indeed, Gilbert’s approximation of the time they had spent together had been accurate—in the heart of Ravellon. Whatever had happened in some future, it was gone; it was in the past. And that was ironic.

She wondered if that was what had happened to Gilbert, but shook her head as she looked down the stairs. If Gilbert was gone because things had been changed, Kattea wouldn’t be here. And Kattea was here, waiting for Gilbert with increasing impatience—which everyone expected—and diminishing hope. Which was heartbreaking.

Helen was standing in the doorway. The door was open, but Helen hadn’t actually moved aside to allow Nightshade entrance. Kaylin could see her back. She could see the delicate lines of shoulders that were not quite elderly; she could see the stiff, straight fall of Helen’s arms.

“Helen.”

Helen didn’t turn.

Kaylin came all the way down the stairs. She intended to join Helen, or to at least stand beside her—but Helen lifted an arm to prevent this from happening.

What did you say to her? Kaylin demanded.

I merely told her I wished to pay my respects to both you and my brother. There was a glimmer of dark amusement in the words. That and anger.

“Helen,” Kaylin repeated. Even when the ancestors had attacked them all, she had never seen Helen behave quite like this.

Helen turned her head—only her head. Her eyes were jet-black. Her face had lost most of the lines that implied smile or laughter.

Is that really all you did?

Helen turned back to her clearly unwanted visitor.

I am not unwise enough to attempt to cause harm in a building of this type. I was perhaps under a misapprehension about the building’s exact nature, as all of my knowledge comes—indirectly—from your first encounters with it.

Her name is Helen.

Silence.

Kaylin folded her arms. “Helen, please. He is not going to hurt me. He’s not even going to try.”

Helen did not appear to hear her.

“Annarion lives here. Nightshade is—as far as I know—his only surviving family.”

“Did I not tell you,” Helen replied, relenting enough to speak, “that I would not allow those who intended you harm across this threshold?”

“Yes. Yes, you did. But he has had plenty of opportunity to cause me harm in the past, and he’s failed to take advantage of any of them. I don’t know what he’s done—”

“You do not understand the nature of the harm. Would he kill you? No. He would no more destroy Melliannos, his sword. Both you and the sword are of value.”

Nightshade stiffened; his eyes were as dark as Barrani eyes could get.

“I do not intend to destroy him,” Helen continued. “I do not wish to hurt Annarion, and his anger with his brother stems, at its base, from attachment.”

“Annarion can’t visit his brother in Nightshade.”

“I fail to see how that is my problem.”

“It’ll be my problem if Annarion leaves the house. He’s been able to move freely only when I’m physically with him. If you want me to see less of Nightshade, this is the safest place for me to be. I don’t ask that you let him do whatever he wants solely because he’s a guest.” Which, to be fair, Kaylin knew would never happen. “But you’re here. There’s nothing you’re not aware of.

“And he did help me,” she added.

Helen’s eyes narrowed as she glared at Kaylin’s blistered cheek.

“...We had different ideas of what I was supposed to be doing during the confrontation.”

“And his ideas were clearly of more value to him than yours.”

“...Helen, he’s Barrani. He’s a Barrani Lord.”

“So, if I recall correctly, is your Teela.”

“You didn’t see Teela when I was in training.”

“It is in no way the same, as you are well aware,” Annarion said from the top of the stairs. Kaylin had no idea how long he’d been standing there. He spoke in very stiff High Barrani, and his eyes were as dark as Nightshade’s, if for entirely different reasons.

Kaylin placed a hand on Helen’s shoulder. “Helen, please.”

Nightshade was, if anything, more annoyed. Do not beg a building such as this. You are Lord here, or you are prisoner. Choose.

“That’s not the way Helen—or I—work. It’s not the way we need to work.”