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“You broke me too,” he called after her, making her pause. “In ways I never could have imagined. So hate me, Tessa. Hate me and break me and make me feel it all, but would you save me? If you could?”
“I do not care,” Tessa said. “I have been forgotten and discarded, used and abused. You think I have any care for what you are? For my own wellbeing at this point? I have nothing to lose anymore. I’ve already lost it all. I am the villain in everyone’s story, including my own. I am the excuse for everyone’s actions, and I am the power everyone seeks. I stand at a crossroads. Salvation or destruction. So either tell me why you chose your path or leave. I will make a choice either way. You can decide if your knowledge is valuable enough for me to consider before I take that next step.”
Knowledge can win over sheer power if wielded with the same finesse.
And I know you don’t know the people of the Underground well, but the vast majority of them don’t deserve to be shunned away from the rest of the world simply because they exist. Yes, there are the truly wicked who deserve to be locked up, but you know where most of those people are? In the kingdoms. Sitting on advisory boards and on the seats of power themselves.”
“Maybe balance isn’t something to be found or fixed or rectified. Maybe balance is something to be created. Maybe we get to decide what that balance looks like.”
“But you do get to decide what balance is for you. Just because the world is trying to tell you what it should look like doesn’t make it true. What is balance for me may not be balance for you.”
“Perfectly wild,” he murmured, kissing her again. “Perfectly untamed.” Another kiss. “Perfect.”
It’s because injustice shouldn’t be tolerated simply because that’s the way it’s always been done. Injustice wrapped in pretty words is still injustice thousands of years later.
“It’s okay to feel things,” he said softly. “You need to feel them.”
“It is hoping, when all feels lost, that a young heir who Selected someone who could be this world’s salvation or destruction will let her be who she was always meant to be. It is hoping she will choose this world too, despite how it broke her and used her and does not deserve her. It is hoping, even when it seems pointless, because hope sees the invisible. What is possible. What hides in the dark, hope drags to the light. Hope is never truly lost as long as one person still dares to dream of something better.”
“This is their choice because this is what we are fighting for. Everyone having a godsdamn choice.”
