Free Cast In Secret by Michelle Sagara

her feelings.
    She glanced at Severn, who was watching her as intently as any of the Tha’alani in the tableau the street had become. She heard herself say, “He’s – he’s speaking to me… .”
    The Tha’alani had never spoken to her, not this way. They had pried, poked, pulled at memories; they had forced
her
to see what they were seeing. But they had never exposed themselves as this child had just so joyfully done.
    Would it have made a difference?
    She set the child down and he ran away, and stopped, and looked back, waiting for her to follow, to chase him.
    She looked back at Epharim for guidance, but found nothing there that would stop her or warn her; he had no fear at all for the child, and clearly no sense of impatience at the delay in escorting her to see Ybelline.
    “His parents – ” she said, touching her unadorned forehead. “They won’t mind?”
    “Mind?”
    But no parents magically appeared to scoop their wayward child back into the safety of their arms, to keep him from strangers such as Kaylin, and that was answer enough because the child was impatiently waiting to be
followed now
. She felt the words, rather than heard them. But she would have felt them from any child, of any race. She might have been a little more careful in the southern stretch, where wings were not yet strong enough to carry a child who chose to launch himself off the edge in mimicry of the adult Aerians, but here, a fall was just a fall.
    She ran after him and his laughter filled the street, and it was joined by the laughter of literally dozens of other children as he ran past – other children, older and younger, and many of the adults. Like a multitude of voices sharing the same throat, the same joy, the same word.
    She caught the child, knowing the game, and tickled him, lifting him and throwing him in the air, taking care to hold on to his armpits. And on the way down, she laughed, as well, and her laughter was asynchronous, out of step with the crowd.
    But when she set the boy free and turned to face Severn and Epharim, she saw only joy in Epharim’s expression. No resignation, no sense of lost time, no judgment and no fear.
    And this was the part of the city that had so terrified her that she wouldn’t even look down at it from the safety of the skies.
    Epharim waited until she had joined them again and said softly, “You fear discovery. You fear your own thoughts.” And he said it with pity. Kaylin was not the world’s biggest pity fan. “Fear, we all know,” he added. “And we all know rejection and pain. But none of us have ever suffered this fear of being revealed, this fear of being seen as we are.” He was serene, and without judgment.
    “The children will not sense this in you,” he added softly. “They are not so powerful yet, and they are children. If they know other thoughts, they can’t be bothered
listening
to the ones that don’t concern them.”
    She nodded absently, wondering what it would be like to live an entire life in a world where every thought was known. Would it even be possible to lie? Would it ever occur to someone to try it? Would it be possible to love in secret, to desire the things you couldn’t have?
    Would it be possible to kill?
    Epharim said, “We are human,” but his tone was quiet. “And there are few of us who can enter your world and live with what we find there. Very few of you who could live in ours, and not be shocked or scandalized by what you would find here. We have very different ideas of what is natural, of what nature
means
.
    “But the young are the young,” he added softly. “And the child will remember you, now.” He smiled and said, “I think he was shocked that you had no
ahporae
. Come. Ybelline is waiting.”
    “You know that from here?”
    He nodded. “She is not far, and she is very, very sensitive.”
    “But she lives on the outside.”
    “She lives here. She travels at the behest of the Emperor. But Dragons are not mortal, and their