Oh, how it pleased her to know that Mother was pleased in return! And to think, she had accomplished all of this as a teenager only! Why, once she hit adulthood . . . Then she'd be a proper Lady. The king would send her to collect tribute. She'd at last have an excuse to explore what lay beyond the Reign's territory instead of only imagining it . . . For so long she had been cooped up here out of duty, never straying far from the borders for love of her family; soon, she could leave and prove her worth for them! "The future does hold great things for us," Gabrielle affirmed with a nod. "And . . . and . . ."
How wretched, to think upon and remember the wolf that had helped her and her siblings make it into this world and still feel that anguish, that bitterness that had been tucked away since the day Moghedien found her lamenting aloud. Weakness, oh God, such weakness . . . From then on Gabby had never spoken a word about Caydenn again, but he remained in her thoughts when they became idle, a fixture of what could have been gone without a trace. "It can be filled, yes," she said in a near mutter, eyeing her mother with some sympathy. It had affected Liriel so . . . She wanted nothing more than to step forward and nuzzle her mother then and there, say that there were plenty of other fish in the sea, that any male would kill to be at her side . . .
But for the first time in her life, Gabrielle stayed that impulse and remained upright and sitting. Liriel wouldn't want any of that nonsense, she remembered. "If you want it to, Mother. There are far more loyal wolves out there to bring here, wolves more suited to this life than he was." She dared not utter his name.
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