You were lucky that the memory of your own cavalier did not hurt you—except sometimes in the form of a sick headache in your temples, or in words stuck on repeat in your head. Some of those words were eating at you now, and you recited them to yourself in the quietude of your brain: Warrior proud of the Third House! Ride forth now as my sister! Ride we to death, and the proving! Ride we with heads held high; we shall bloody our blades in the foe’s heart; death shall we bring to the foul ones— Death shall we win for ourselves, as the prize for our high deeds done on the ash-choked plains of the
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