And when my shaking stopped, I studied it. All of those wretched things. The pride and the hypocrisy and the shame. The rage and the cowardice and the hurt. Then I began to see other things. More important things—more vital. “And what I saw,” I said quietly to him as the Carver raised a hand. “I think—I think I loved it. Forgave it—me. All of it.” It was only in that moment when I knew—I’d understood what the Suriel had meant. Only I could allow the bad to break me. Only I could own it, embrace it. And when I’d learned that … the Ouroboros had yielded to me.
