Everything - our houses, our clothes, our hairstyles - is meant to help us forget ourselves and to protect us from vanity, greed and envy, which are just forms of selfishness. If we have little, and want for little, and we are all equal, we envy no one.

I feel the monster of grief again, writhing in the empty space where my heart and stomach used to be. I gasp, pressing both palms to my chest. Now the monstrous thing has its claws around my throat, squeezing my airway. I twist and put my head between my knees, breathing until the strangled feeling leaves me.

The Candor sing the praises of the truth, but they never tell you how much it costs.

He pushes his hair, soaked from the snow, out of his eyes. "So what are we going to do, break a window? Look for a back door?" "I'm just going to walk in," I say. "I'm her son." "You also betrayed her and left the city when she forbade anyone from doing that," he says, "and she sent people after you to stop you. People with guns." "You can stay here if you want," I say. "Where the serum goes, I go," he says. "But if you get shot at, I'm going to grab it and run." "I don't expect anything more." He is a strange sort of person.

But I will find new habits, new thoughts, new rules. I will become something else.

Resisting is worth doing.

I might be in love with you." He smiles a little. "I'm waiting until I'm sure to tell you, though.