The Traitor Baru Cormorant (The Masquerade, #1)

by Seth Dickinson

I must understand it, so I can stop it from ever happening again. I will not cry. I will understand.

Far more dangerous to shut him out and deny even the illusion of control.

She smiled haughtily—it did not come so hard.

Her fury had nothing else to eat and so it began to eat her.

They’d gone to raid Vultjag’s larder for interesting cheeses.

“I’d hoped to see the stars.” “There are safer places under the same sky.”

The key will not open the outermost door. With enough repetition, most prisoners learn to ignore a key, an open door, a whisper to run. Led out onto the street, they will wait to be returned to their cells. After a time, they begin to teach new prisoners the same.