( He doesn't mean the words to wound; he cannot know how they lodge between her ribs. The truth that she doesn't wish to look at.
Petrana doesn't want to go home. She doesn't sound like a revolutionary, in truth, she sounds like someone who has spent a great deal of time justifying the things she has to live with, the things she fights with, the things she cannot be seen to disagree with. Lamorre is no better than the man she lies beside at night, but that doesn't make his crimes or his cruelty the lesser - he claims the moral highground for his wounded fucking pride and what is she to do but live with it? But hold it in her hands and make something of it.
She had a child to protect. She did her best.
It is much quieter, when she speaks again, but steady enough. )
He was. It was -
He felt that it was necessary for me to learn.
( Maybe he was right. Maybe he wasn't. The choice was not hers to make, but the consequence hers to live with. )
And I am a quick student, ( more lightly, ) of his magic, and, in this case, of Tevene.
no subject
Petrana doesn't want to go home. She doesn't sound like a revolutionary, in truth, she sounds like someone who has spent a great deal of time justifying the things she has to live with, the things she fights with, the things she cannot be seen to disagree with. Lamorre is no better than the man she lies beside at night, but that doesn't make his crimes or his cruelty the lesser - he claims the moral highground for his wounded fucking pride and what is she to do but live with it? But hold it in her hands and make something of it.
She had a child to protect. She did her best.
It is much quieter, when she speaks again, but steady enough. )
He was. It was -
He felt that it was necessary for me to learn.
( Maybe he was right. Maybe he wasn't. The choice was not hers to make, but the consequence hers to live with. )
And I am a quick student, ( more lightly, ) of his magic, and, in this case, of Tevene.