The Warrior's Apprentice (Vorkosigan Saga, #2)

by Lois McMaster Bujold

I only wanted to serve Barrayar, as my father before me. When I couldn’t serve Barrayar, I wanted—I wanted to serve something. To”—he raised his eyes to his father’s, driven to a painful honesty—“to make my life an offering fit to lay at his feet.” He shrugged. “Screwed up again.”

“Count Vorhalas.” Miles’s voice flexed across the silence like a blade. “Be satisfied. For if you carry this through, at some point you are going to have to look my mother in the eye and repeat that. Dare you?”

“Mother,” said Miles, “calls it my great gift. Tests are a gift, she says, and great tests are a great gift. Of course,” he added thoughtfully, “it’s widely agreed my mother is a bit strange . . .”

“Hell,” Vorhalas muttered, after a short, interminable silence, not to Miles but to Count Vorkosigan. “He’s got his mother’s eyes.” “I’ve noticed that,” Count Vorkosigan murmured back. Vorhalas glared at him in exasperation. “I am not a bloody saint,” Vorhalas declared, to the air generally.