She expected the pain, when it came. But she gasped at its sharpness; it was not like any pain she had felt before. He kissed her and slowed and would have stopped. But she laughed, and said that this one time she would consent to hurt, and bleed, at his touch. He smiled into her neck and kissed her again and she moved with him through the pain. The pain became a warmth that grew. Grew, and stopped her breath. And took her breath and her pain and her mind away from her body, so that there was nothing but her body and his body and the light and fire they made together.

People want incongruous, impossible things.

He considered her seriously. "Well. And that's easy," he said. "My Grace will protect me from him, And I'll protect you. You'll be safe with me, Katsa.

That was a perfectly reasonable explanation," she said grumpily. "Perhaps my advisers don't lie to me." "Isn't that what you'd want?" asked Giddon. "Well, yes, but it doesn't elucidate my puzzle!" "If I may say so, Lady Queen," said Giddon, "it's not always easy to follow your conversation." "Oh, Giddon," she said, sighing. "If it's any comfort, I don't follow it either.

She cried like a person whose heart is broken and wondered how, when two people loved each other, there could be such a broken heart.

In the saddle again, Fire mulled over the commander's trust, prodding it around, like a candy in her mouth, trying to decide whether she believed it.

And is it the way, in these kingdoms you fell from, for a woman to join forces with an unnatural child who's murdered her friend? Or is that expectation unique to you, and your infinitesimal heart?