They really did you over,” she says, after peering at my bruised face. “This way, we’ll get you sorted out.” She’s not friendly, just abrupt and sharp, like she’s dealing with another problem in her long day.
Cat HellisenEvery now and then one stands up and orates at length to the unfortunate crowd, after which he bows to their scattered applause. Personally, I think they’d be better served by plates broken over their heads than by hand-claps.
Cat HellisenGris. Out of the frying pan and into the fire.
Cat HellisenShe is somewhat”—I search for an appropriate response—“imposing.”
“I think you mean terrifying.”
“That too.
In the end, we make our choices on our own. And no matter how stupid they are, we have to live—or die—with what we’ve done. Sometimes choosing our moment of death is the only freedom we have left.
Cat HellisenIf all I can feel is the very fraying edge of their grief, then I do not want to think how dark the center must be.
Cat HellisenNo matter what the results, it is my choices that define me. And I will fight for them, even when it seems that failure is inevitable. Perhaps most especially then.
Cat HellisenBefore, I would have been powdered and perfumed, my hair done in an elaborate style by the patient fingers of servants. The household crake would have written lines in my honor, my dress would have been new, and I would have been as beautifully turned out as glass sculpture from House Canroth. And as empty.
Cat HellisenThere is something frosty about her, and when she talks I expect to feel her breath against my face like a winter sea-gale. Instead, her voice is calm and quiet, but hidden under it are snake-hisses and sneers.
“Ilven will not be available for your games today, Felicita, dear.”
There is a subtle emphasis on games and dear. Nothing overt—I am, after all, from House Pelim—but enough for me to know that Malker are determined to claw their way up to their old level on the social scale. It’s a warning of sorts.
I want to scream. My friend doesn’t mumble. She doesn’t walk with her head down. She doesn’t quietly accept that her education will be left in the hands of boys fresh from university.
“Ilven?” I want to remind her that she is a person who kicks off her shoes and stockings to run across the green fields behind our estates, that she once helped me play pranks on my idiot of a brother, that we are sister-friends, that we have kissed and sworn eternal friendship.
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