For a group of people who claimed to be concerned for her safety, they did seem to have developed rather a habit of encouraging uprisings against monarchs.

Katsa sat in the darkness of the Sunderan forest and understood three truths. She loved Po. She wanted Po. And she could never be anyone's but her own.

Living is too hard right now. Dying is easy. Let me die.

What are you grinning at?" Katsa demanded for the third or fourth time. "Is the ceiling about to cave in on my head or something? You look like we're both on the verge of an enormous joke." "Katsa, only you would consider the collapse of the ceiling a good joke.

Then she'll know I'll want to knock her senseless if she so much as looks at me.

Isn't is lovely to be all together again?" Raffin said, throwing one arm around Po and the other around Bann. -------- She wanted them near, even if they were subsumed by their own affairs, she needed them at sword practice in the morning, at dinner at night, moving and shifting around her, there and gone, back again, arguing, teasing, acting like people who knew who they were.

There will be no yelling at people who are bleeding themselves to unconsciousness.