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When you’re a monster, she thought, you are thanked and praised for not behaving like a monster. She would like to restrain from cruelty and receive no admiration for it.
But then, it was a strange monster, for beneath its exterior it was frightened and sickened by its own violence.
A man who thought himself her protector—her protector when she could outduel him if she used a toothpick to his sword.
She couldn’t remember crying, not once in her life. Not until this fool Lienid had come to her court, and lied to her, and then announced that he was leaving.
Because if he was also foolish, then her foolishness bothered her less.
know you’re teasing me. And you should know I’m not easily humiliated. You may hunt for my food, and pound me every time we fight, and protect me when we’re attacked, if you like. I’ll thank you for
He’d said it simply, as if it were nothing. But it wasn’t nothing for Katsa to rely on someone else’s protection. She’d never done such a thing in her life.
His eyes were beautiful. His face was beautiful to her in every way, and his shoulders and hands. And his arms that hung over his knees, and his chest that was not moving, because he held his breath as he watched her. And the heart in his chest. This friend. How had she not seen this before? How had she not seen him? She was blind. And
then tears choked her eyes, for she had not asked for this. She had not asked for this beautiful man before her, with something hopeful in his eyes that she did not want.
know you don’t want this, Katsa. But I can’t help myself. The moment you came barreling into my life I was lost. I’m afraid to tell you what I wish for, for fear you’ll . . . oh, I don’t know, throw me into the fire. Or more likely, refuse me. Or worst of all, despise me,” he said, his voice breaking and his eyes dropping from her face. His face
dropping into his hands. “I love you,” he said. “You’re more dear to my heart than I ever knew anyone could be. And I’ve made you cry; and there I’ll stop.”
the Sunderan forest and understood three truths. She loved Po. She wanted Po. And she could never be anyone’s but her own.
“I’ll give myself to you however you’ll take me,”
Could she be his lover and still belong to herself?
“Katsa, a man would be a fool to try to keep you in a cage.”
“Don’t worry your heart, Katsa.” His voice came from a distance. “I’m only finding what you want.”
she thought of how Bitterblue had trusted no man when first they’d met. And now the girl allowed this enormous sailor to pick her up and hold her, like a father, and the girl’s arm was around Patch’s neck, and she and Patch laughed up at Katsa together.
How absurd it was that in all seven kingdoms, the weakest and most vulnerable of people—girls, women—went
he was not drunk on his power. He might never dream of helping a sailor to haul a rope, but he would stand with the sailor interestedly while the sailor hauled the rope, and ask him questions about the rope, about his work, his home, his mother and father, his cousin who spent a year once fishing in the lakes of Nander.
Katsa absorbed all this in a glance. And that was enough of that, for it was Po she wanted to fill her eyes with.
How exactly, when I’m aware of everything above, below, before, behind, and beyond me, am I supposed to keep my mind on the ground beneath my feet?”
and the irrelevant things fade away a bit, naturally. So that you are all of my focus.”
