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She wasn’t Kelsier. She had yet to decide if that was a bad or a good thing.
Despite her oddities—or more likely because of them—he loved this thin woman with the determined eyes and blunt temperament. She was like no one he had ever known—a woman of simple, yet honest, beauty and wit.
She leaned up, looking at his smirking face. “You know, Elend—sometimes it’s bloody difficult to tell when you’re teasing, and when you’re merely being dense.” “That makes me more mysterious, right?” “Something like that,” she said, snuggling up against him again.
“Good men don’t become legends,” he said quietly. “Good men don’t need to become legends.” She opened her eyes, looking up at him. “They simply do what’s right anyway.”
Ham chuckled. “We really have to do something about your ambivalence toward civic duty, kid.” “I already overthrew one government,” Vin said. “I figure that takes care of my ‘civic duty’ for a while.”
Great, Elend thought. I’ve filled my inner council with a bunch of thrill-seeking masochists. Even worse, I’ve decided to join them.
“I don’t like her,” she said. Elend smiled, stacking up the books on his table. “You don’t like anyone when you first meet them, Vin.” “I liked you.” “Thereby demonstrating that you are a terrible judge of character.”
Regardless, he found insanity no excuse for irrational behavior. Some men were blind, others had poor tempers. Still others heard voices. It was all the same in the end. A man was defined not by his flaws, but by how he overcame them.
“I don’t know,” Elend finally said, sitting back in his chair, sighing. “Vin isn’t … like other women.” Tindwyl raised an eyebrow, her voice softening slightly. “I think that the more women you come to know, Your Majesty, the more you’ll find that statement applies to all of them.”
“Good men can make terrible kings,” Tindwyl noted. “But bad men cannot make good kings,” Sazed said. “It is better to start with a good man and work on the rest, I think.”
“Anyone who would feel disappointed to find you is too dense to be of any relevance,” Elend said.
It seems that the rebels found the chaos of transition more difficult to accept than the tyranny they had known before. They joyfully welcomed back authority—even oppressive authority—for it was less painful for them than uncertainty.
“I find that hard to accept, Vin.” “Why?” Dockson met her eyes. “Because if I accept that Elend bears no guilt for what his people did to mine, then I must admit to being a monster for the things that I did to them.”
Luthadel was like a man with a knife pressed very closely to his throat. Each breath cut the skin.
She had to decide. Elend was the one she wanted to be with. He represented peace. Happiness. On the other hand, Zane represented what she felt she had to become. For the good of everyone involved.
“I believe,” he said firmly, “that Vin is my wife, and that I love her. Anything important to her is important to me—and anything she believes has at least that much weight of truth to me.
