“You are the strongest,” she says. “You could be the one. But up close, you are such a disappointment. Your eyes are wary as a kicked dog’s, when you and I both know you have never been kicked in your life. Not like me, who has been kicked down with poisons and popped blisters and made to vomit until I weep. “That is why I am going to win,” she goes on as they twirl. “I may be the weakest, but I am a queen, through and through. All the way down to my dead blood and bones.”
