Ridiculous. But she was proposing a bargain. ‘Why?’ I slowly said. ‘Because you remind us of ourselves, Emelin.’ As if it was a compliment. As if I’d pleaded for her approval like a beggar for bread. ‘You’re hungry. You’re bold. We do respect that, even if you made the mistake of using those powers against us.’ Ah, yes. Because she’d made such a habit of respecting all the other bold, hungry people who had challenged her in the past, rather than killing them outright … Oh. It dawned on me, then – she wasn’t sure if she could kill me.
