“If I got paid, I’d buy you something wonderful.” Ordo sometimes had an anxious, apologetic tone when he felt he’d fallen short of perfection, a rare lapse in his apparently unassailable confidence. That was what happened, Besany thought, when a child was told it had to die for failing to meet standards. It ripped her apart every time; not even Skirata’s influence—constantly telling them they were perfect, wonderful, brilliant—could totally erase that trauma. “This is the best I can do right now. Do you want to marry me?” Ordo was a slave by any other name, an object manufactured for a task,
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