“All journeys begin with a step, Tem.” She still didn’t move. Her mother’s voice was beating through her brain: You will do as he says, and try to learn something. But Tem wasn’t accustomed to following orders. It went against every instinct in her body—it violated everything about who she was as a person. She couldn’t just blindly obey him. She wasn’t built that way. She never had been. So she said: “You first.”
