The end of Ki'el's weed pick­ing as­sign­ment marked the last of her tasks for the day, ac­cord­ing to Futi, leav­ing Ki'el un­cer­tain as to where her friends--or fam­i­ly, were now. Futi was will­ing to di­rect her to Mian, as he was in fact prepar­ing for the evening meal along with oth­er kitchen staff, but said lit­tle more about Xam ex­cept that she was away.

Ki'el had seen the small kitchen on the way in, not­ing that it seemed to have been lived in, and so she was un­sur­prised to find that the air was charged when she looked. Mian was do­ing lit­tle at the mo­ment, ob­serv­ing and stir­ring a pot, while an­oth­er man, one with shoul­der-length black hair that looked a bit too wild, was in­tent­ly fo­cus­ing on chop­ping veg­eta­bles. He glanced up at the door when Ki'el ap­peared, but did not dis­tract him­self fur­ther.

"Ki'el." Mian's voice was warm when he glanced up and no­ticed her. "I hope you're hav­ing a bet­ter day than me so far."

"Noth­ing to com­plain about," Ki'el said, though it wasn't quite true. She glanced at the oth­er cook. "Did any­thing bad hap­pen?"

Ki'el not­ed the oth­er cook giv­ing Mian a look, but nei­ther man dwelled on it. "Only peo­ple who don't want my help," he said. "Es­pe­cial­ly when I first ar­rive. There's not much I can do ex­cept try to prove my­self, but even so, one nev­er came around." He checked back on the pot he was stir­ring, then set the la­dle aside. "There are... strong per­son­al­i­ties here."

"You step on land­mines," the oth­er cook said, naked dis­trust in his voice. "I don't know if you're just stu­pid or some­thing worse, but the way you talk will get you in­tro trou­ble no mat­ter where you go."

Mian gave Ki'el a shrug, and then turned back. "Should I start the next--"

"No." The cook paused his chop­ping for a mo­ment. "Yes. Fill a pan with wa­ter and get it heat­ing. Not the clos­er well, the clean one."

Mian quick­ly stirred the pot again be­fore set­ting the ladle aside and grab­bing an­oth­er lar­gish pot. Ki'el stood aside and fol­lowed him as he be­gan quick-walk­ing down the hill. "I told him I wasn't like the peo­ple who didn't want to work," Mian said once they were a lit­tle ways away. "I know that it's a thing around here. I sup­pose I know that it's a fool­ish thing to say, but I'm also not sure how to say it bet­ter."

"He might not wish to work," Ki'el said, though she could also ad­mit she didn't un­der­stand. "But he also does not wish to be re­placed."

"I sup­pose every­one around here finds their place. It's hard for me to un­der­stand their point of view, though."

Ki'el con­sid­ered it, as they walked a lit­tle ways into the for­est, where a small cir­cu­lar well with a long-han­dle pump on top sat, sur­round­ed by a small stone-brick cir­cle. Mian pumped the han­dle a cou­ple times, and al­though the wa­ter that first came out ap­peared clear, he con­tin­ued for an­oth­er mo­ment be­fore fill­ing the pot.

"I sup­pose we did pay a lot to come here," Mian said, as he bal­anced the pot with still pump­ing the han­dle. "It's hard to keep that in mind, since it was Alas­si--Sobon's mon­ey."

Ki'el watched him bal­ance the pot un­til it was full, then turn and be­gin walk­ing, de­lay­ing a mo­ment too long and need­ing to hur­ry to catch up. What Mian said wasn't wrong, but it also didn't quite an­swer it for her, ei­ther. "This place is an op­por­tu­ni­ty to do great things. I do not see why it would be dif­fi­cult to ac­cept work­ing for that."

"Is it?" Mian's voice sound­ed a lit­tle dis­tant, as they came back in view of the build­ing. "Couldn't she have taught us bet­ter? Taught us more?"

Ki'el hes­i­tat­ed, want­i­ng to speak of the aug­ment that Sobon had left be­hind with her, but rec­og­niz­ing as they drew clos­er that oth­ers might be lis­ten­ing. "She didn't think so."

"And yet a few words from her are worth a thou­sand from some­one else. You know it's true." Mian straight­ened as they came through the front door, and by the time he had put the pot on the stove and got­ten back into stir­ring the oth­er, any sign of the in­tro­spec­tive mood he'd had van­ished.

Ki'el watched for a minute more, but turned away when she heard voic­es com­ing from out­side.

She was sur­prised to find, out­side, sev­er­al mem­bers of the Less­er House, ones that had not been there even mo­ments be­fore, gath­ered around an­oth­er, a young man or an­drog­y­nous woman with the bright­est red hair that Ki'el had ever seen. Al­though there was pal­pa­ble re­sent­ment and angst in the air, it was un­clear why, and the sit­u­a­tion made no sense to Ki'el, see­ing it from the out­side. From what she could tell, they were not far apart in their cul­ti­va­tion, and while she would not be sur­prised if they were far apart in sta­tus, as most of the rest of them looked clear­ly Djang, she could not imag­ine what must have tran­spired for that to mat­ter.

When she felt one of the sur­round­ing mem­bers of the Less­er House reach out to the red-haired per­son, there was some­thing so dirty about their qi that Ki'el un­con­scious­ly gave a shout of protest, draw­ing at­ten­tion that she im­me­di­ate­ly knew she should not have drawn.

"A new one?" The clos­est man to Ki'el twitched slight­ly as he pushed his qi into an ar­ti­fact bracelet, and Ki'el could tell im­me­di­ate­ly that it linked him to the oth­ers in some way, as the group of eight sud­den­ly moved as though with a sin­gle mind, leap­ing through the air un­til they sur­round­ed her much like they had sur­round­ed the red haired one. She felt her qi surge pro­tec­tive­ly with­in her... but it was very lit­tle com­pared to what was sud­den­ly around her. "What is it with this sect," the man com­plained, sneer­ing down at Ki'el, "ac­cept­ing half­breeds and for­eign trash, just for, what? A lit­tle mon­ey? Pa­thet­ic of them."

"If they would just ac­cept more of our fam­i­ly's do­na­tions, they wouldn't need such piti­ful things," one of the oth­ers agreed, and Ki'el glanced to find her sneer­ing.

Ki'el im­me­di­ate­ly be­gan push­ing on her Right­eous Cy­cle, feed­ing the pure aether that came from it into her spir­it. It had al­ways helped her to re­sist ef­fects from out­side qi... and it did, to­day, much like it had when she was cap­tured and abused by pi­rates, tru­ly wicked crea­tures that had in­tend­ed to break her spir­it and sell her into slav­ery. But there was a dif­fer­ence, here. When she re­sist­ed the qi pres­sure that was be­ing pressed into her, the ones around here were not con­fused.

In­stead, the pres­sure dou­bled, and Ki'el had to close her eyes, fo­cus­ing all of her spir­it on first one, then a sec­ond of her Right Hand Aether rings, feed­ing the back, know­ing, know­ing that whether or not she suc­cumbed to the hos­tile aether that poured in from all around her meant some­thing sig­nif­i­cant to her.

When the qi in­ten­si­ty around her dou­bled again, for the first time, those rings be­gan to fail her. They had felt like they were the only air she could breathe when she was tor­tured--beat­en, burned, elec­tro­cut­ed. But these peo­ple, by only un­veil­ing their spir­its, threat­ened to do worse.

{ Do you wish for ad­vice? }

Ki'el al­most lost con­cen­tra­tion, but signaled des­per­ate as­sent to the thing in her mind.

In­stead of giv­ing words of ad­vice, the thing in her mind brought her back to the two riv­er stones, one push­ing end­less­ly on the world around it, and one drink­ing end­less­ly from it. And af­ter only a mo­ment, when Ki'el thought she grasped what was be­ing said, the aug­ment flashed just a mo­ment of im­age in her mind, of four stones push­ing, and four stones pulling, cre­at­ing a tear­ing cur­rent, one that felt in­ex­orable, un­ques­tion­able. Un­con­quer­able.

Ki'el's eyes flew open as she had that thought, and she looked, tru­ly looked at the qi around her. Be­cause she had felt that all of them were op­press­ing her, she had thought that all of them were do­ing the same things, but as soon as she un­der­stood that it was a two-part ef­fect, sud­den­ly her de­fens­es did not feel cor­rect. Be­cause she did need to push aether into her body to re­sist that which was push­ing into her, but if she pushed aether into the parts of her body where en­er­gy was be­ing tak­en away, then that was wast­ed.

Al­though it took her more than a mo­ment to change the way she pushed her aether into her body's spir­it, the dif­fer­ence was ob­vi­ous. She still strug­gled against the weight of what was press­ing in on her, but sud­den­ly, she was twice as strong against it, per­haps more.

"Oh, the lit­tle for­eign bitch knows a trick or two? I'd say it's im­pres­sive in­ter­nal qi con­trol, but I'm not ever go­ing to be im­pressed by trash, no mat­ter how well trained it is." The one who was in the lead, Ki'el now saw, was not press­ing hard on his own spir­it, and looked pris­tine and un­con­cerned with the world, as though noth­ing that had oc­curred was even note­wor­thy. But Ki'el felt his in­ter­nal qi flex, and he stepped for­ward, and Ki'el re­al­ized with com­plete shock a mo­ment be­fore it hap­pened that he was in­tend­ing to strike her.

And then the heel of the man's hand smashed into her nose, and she fell back­wards, stunned mo­men­tar­i­ly out of her fo­cus.

Ki'el could feel some­thing like whis­pers in the dark in the mo­ment when she was not flush­ing out her spir­it, but as soon as she put pres­sure on the rings again, those whis­pers sud­den­ly felt dis­tant, im­per­son­al. She got over her shock in only a mo­ment, and leaped to her feet, balling her fists and look­ing straight at the man who had so ca­su­al­ly struck her, al­ready ques­tion­ing in her mind whether the man's un­pro­voked at­tack would jus­ti­fy at­tack­ing him. She want­ed it to be so sim­ple, but she sus­pect­ed it was not.

Even so, it was as­ton­ish­ing that the man saw both her re­sis­tance and re­straint and sim­ply scoffed at her.

"As al­ways with for­eign trash," he said, "weak and in­com­pe­tent. Do you not have any fire in your spir­it at all? I won­der how your an­ces­tors sur­vived their first con­tact with the Djang. Such a weak thing is not even wor­thy to be a ser­vant; you are mere­ly meat."

Ki'el suf­fered the in­dig­ni­ties, her mind eas­i­ly able to fo­cus on words, and was just bare­ly, bare­ly able to keep more than that in her mind, thanks to the flow of Right­eous Aether with­in her. With­out ques­tion, this taunt­ing was all some kind of trap, and she dared not--

"At least she's not like that oth­er trash," one of the women sur­round­ing her chuck­led. "We know ex­act­ly how that meat sur­vived--by serv­ing her bet­ters on her knees and back."

Ki'el felt a trick­le of chill hor­ror go through her as she un­der­stood what the woman was say­ing, but the thought did not have a chance to ma­ture in her mind be­fore there was a flash of red, and the woman was sud­den­ly buried un­der a red smear of light, col­laps­ing to her knees. And Ki'el, un­cer­tain but al­ready primed to act, shift­ed im­me­di­ate­ly to cov­er the red-haired per­son, as two of the oth­ers sur­round­ing her sud­den­ly moved to at­tack.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

It took both aether and a touch of her qi for Ki'el to move quick­ly enough to catch a full-strength kick that was aimed at the red haired one with her hands, al­though the force of it pushed her back­wards into where they were fight­ing with the woman with poi­soned words, and all three of them tum­bled to the ground. Ki'el rolled with it, notic­ing an­oth­er kick from a dif­fer­ent man, and on in­stinct, flashed an im­age at the red haired one with her in­tent--and the red haired one re­spond­ed, sud­den­ly pick­ing up the woman they were fight­ing and lift­ing them straight into the kick, so that it land­ed on her back in­stead.

It was in that mo­ment, at that an­gle, that Ki'el un­der­stood that the red haired per­son had more than sim­ply red hair on their head, but also point­ed red ears like an an­i­mal, though she was sure they had not been there be­fore. But she wiped the thought from her mind as some­one else near­by bent down, in­tend­ing to punch Ki'el in the head. She punched back, not aim­ing for his face, but strik­ing his arm near the el­bow to stop the blow from land­ing. It was some­thing she had prac­ticed a lit­tle with Mian, us­ing the staff form of her Aether Sword, but rarely with her hands.

Still, her blow land­ed, and al­though the man's fist con­tin­ued for­ward, it de­flect­ed to the side, not strik­ing her. Be­side her, the red haired per­son snarled and clawed at the woman's face, and Ki'el felt a surge of qi from in­side them, and so she reached down and hauled the red haired one to their feet, pulling them away be­fore they could do some­thing rash. She felt them at first re­spond bad­ly to the con­tact, and once she pulled them to their feet, the red haired one start­ed to round on her, but Ki'el pushed a sense of peace with her in­tent, which at least made them pause.

"Fuck­ing mon­ster! As­sault! As­sault!" The man who had start­ed every­thing, nat­u­ral­ly, was the first one to cry out as though a crime had been com­mit­ted, and Ki'el sensed a pulse of qi from his bracelet ar­ti­fact, and mo­ments lat­er all of his com­pan­ions had shift­ed from fu­ri­ous to look­ing scared. "Da Chi­an has gone fer­al! Stop her! Kill her!"

This only caused Chi­an to bris­tle fur­ther, but Ki'el put a hand on their shoul­der, push­ing right­eous aether into them, and al­though there was a mo­ment of con­fu­sion, sud­den­ly they round­ed on Ki'el, a ter­ri­bly con­fused look on their face.

"What... what have I...?" Da Chi­an's voice was sud­den­ly scared, too, and Ki'el--in part on in­stinct, and in part out of spite for the ob­vi­ous pro­duc­tion that the at­tack­ers were putting on, pulled them into a pro­tec­tive hug, flood­ing their spir­it and her own with pure right-hand aether.

It only took a mo­ment for the red haired one's pound­ing heart to qui­et, and then an­oth­er mo­ment be­fore they be­gan shak­ing and cry­ing, mak­ing Ki'el feel a lit­tle awk­ward to stand there hold­ing them, al­though on a cer­tain lev­el, it did not feel wrong, ex­act­ly.

It was thanks to this that when two Out­er Dis­ci­ples of the sect dropped from nowhere into the clear­ing, the only one look­ing an­gry was the man who had start­ed every­thing, al­though Ki'el her­self felt that it was ob­vi­ous just how much his com­pan­ions were also fak­ing their up­set, ex­cept for the one who now bore sev­er­al scratch­es across her face.

"Al­right, ju­nior Broth­ers and Sis­ters, who start­ed this?" The man who spoke had a met­al staff, one with a ring hov­er­ing near each end of it, sev­er­al small­er rings dan­gling freely from those. Al­though his eyes swept over the crowd--both those that had been in­volved, and the grow­ing group of peo­ple around the edges who had not, his cold eyes set­tled on Ki'el and Da Chi­an with a look that was also de­mean­ing.

"She did!" The man who had start­ed every­thing snarled, point­ing at Da Chain. "Like I told you she would! She struck my friend--"

"You struck me first," Ki'el said, and though it wasn't quite true, spoke up in the awk­ward still­ness. "Da Chi­an was pro­tect­ing me."

"You LIE!" The man's fury ex­plod­ed from him with a qi wave that might have been im­pres­sive some­where else in the world. "This for­eign--" he caught him­self just in time, smooth­ing over his spir­it rough­ly. "This ju­nior sis­ter was un­fa­mil­iar with how things worked here, and I was pro­vid­ing guid­ance."

"You called my an­ces­tors whores that were no bet­ter than meat," Ki'el said, keep­ing her spir­it lev­el and un­fla­vored, let­ting the truth of what she said stand out. Even so, she could not help re­fram­ing what had hap­pened just a lit­tle. "Even then, no one struck you un­til af­ter you struck me."

"You daugh­ter of a WHORE!" the man ex­plod­ed, and a lance of qi from some ar­ti­fact she had not no­ticed leaped out at her, but the sec­ond Out­er Dis­ci­ple, who had not yet ated, sim­ply flicked a hand up and scat­tered it in midair as though it were a puff of smoke.

"Xan Bu," the Out­er Dis­ci­ple's words were cold, "I had heard from sev­er­al peo­ple that you were a tal­ent­ed ma­nip­u­la­tor, but it seems that ac­cu­sa­tion was base­less. Even an in­fant could look at this sit­u­a­tion and tell that you were in the wrong." She turned and glared at the oth­er Out­er Dis­ci­ple, who sim­ply main­tained a sto­ic fa­cade, hav­ing said and done noth­ing. "But be­yond that, strik­ing an­oth­er dis­ci­ple, even a mem­ber of the Less­er House, while an Out­er Dis­ci­ple is here? It seems that you, above all oth­ers, are un­fa­mil­iar with how things work here. Per­haps you should re­ceive guid­ance in turn?"

Xan Bu clenched every mus­cle in his body like his rage would some­how open a hid­den well­spring of qi deep with­in him, but noth­ing surged forth, and af­ter a mo­ment, the man forced him­self to stand straight. "I... this dis­ci­ple may have been mis­tak­en."

The sec­ond Out­er Dis­ci­ple turned to look at Ki'el, who was there hold­ing Da Chi­an against her. "You, dis­ci­ple. As the ag­griev­ed, would you care to pro­vide guid­ance to your fel­low dis­ci­ple?" There was no ques­tion­ing the in­tent be­hind the woman's words, but Ki'el con­tin­ued to cir­cu­late right­eous aether through her, and through Da Chi­an, and the words struck her very dif­fer­ent­ly, be­cause her spir­it was not boil­ing over with ha­tred, was not con­sumed by the fact that she had been at­tacked.

And she had. And she un­der­stood that. But the more that she pushed aether into her spir­it, the more she seemed to catch flick­ers of the out­side world that she had not caught be­fore. And she thought, as she stood there, that the whis­pers she had heard when she was at­tacked were still hang­ing around Xan Bu, but they were not point­ed at her, or any­one else, but at the man him­self. And Ki'el had a mo­ment in which she won­dered if that had al­ways been the case.

And so she re­leased Da Chi­an and moved to­wards the man, watch­ing as every­one else tensed, no doubt ex­pect­ing her to strike him in the face. And in­stead she moved around the man in a slow cir­cle, study­ing his qi, and more and more cer­tain as she did that the same barbs that had threat­ened to tear into her spir­it were tor­tur­ing him even now.

That was good, in a way. Ki'el felt a cer­tain jus­tice know­ing the he suf­fered af­ter hurt­ing her. But she also could not help think­ing that the barbs had per­haps been there long be­fore, and had tor­tured him un­til he broke, much like he, and the pi­rates that Sobon had saved her from, had wished to break her. So af­ter walk­ing one full cir­cle around him, she walked a sec­ond time, this time look­ing as much at his flesh as she did his spir­it.

It was dif­fi­cult to tell what his his­to­ry was, ex­cept that the clothes that he wore were nei­ther the rich­est silks Ki'el had seen--and she was sure she had not seen tru­ly fine silk, even in the store in the city that Sobon had tak­en her to--nor were they the rough cloth of work­ing clothes. They were fine clothes, but they had been dirt­ied and cleaned, and there were nicks and cuts, ev­i­dence of his work at the Sect. His hair was black and cut short, in what might have been a dig­ni­fied style if it had been bet­ter done and his hair prop­er­ly cared for; his face had re­cent­ly been shaved clean but had re­grown more than enough to show. His pos­ture con­tin­ued to show no re­morse and no con­fu­sion, only a com­bat­ive in­tent that could not be ig­nored or de­nied.

And his eyes, Ki'el thought, showed an ab­solute and com­plete ded­i­ca­tion. He be­lieved he knew some­thing to the depths of his soul. What that was, Ki'el could not guess. All that she knew was that ded­i­ca­tion was not to­wards his qi, was not to­wards grow­ing stronger.

So when she had com­plet­ed her walk, she turned to look into his face, and said ex­act­ly that. "Broth­er Xan Bu," she said, and the man flinched, per­haps think­ing that Ki'el would shame him be­fore at­tack­ing. "I be­lieve that you are ful­ly ded­i­cat­ed in your spir­it to some­thing, and that some­thing is not grow­ing stronger. I be­lieve that if you wish to suc­ceed in this place, you should show as much ded­i­ca­tion to your qi as you show to... what­ev­er de­mon it is in­side of you that you give con­trol. And I be­lieve that if you gave that ded­i­ca­tion to your qi in­stead, you would no longer be con­fined to the Less­er House." Al­though she still felt a deep de­sire to still strike at him, she turned away, let­ting the act of de­fi­ance be her part­ing blow. "That is my guid­ance."

Ki'el was three steps away when some­one struck her full in the back.

She did not un­der­stand, as she fell, and she would not un­der­stand lat­er. She tried to get up, or roll onto her back, but all she was met with was pain. It did not last; she felt a pair of hands lift­ing her al­most im­me­di­ate­ly, hands that were re­mark­ably gen­tle, and some­how, in the blur of mo­tion that fol­lowed, there was no fur­ther pain.

Ki'el had nev­er ceased to press her right­eous aether into her spir­it, and al­though she closed her eyes for a part of the trip, and al­though the world out­side of her body be­came in­creas­ing­ly con­fused as some­thing like shock set in, she could tell that the trip was fair­ly short, and she was brought into a build­ing and laid in a bed. And a man she had not met was quick­ly there, and her shirt was lift­ed, and very pow­er­ful med­ical qi pressed into a wound on her back that she be­came aware was di­rect­ly in her spine.

She felt some­thing shift, there, and sud­den­ly, the pain was much less.

"It was in time," a voice said near­by. "She will re­cov­er her full strength, and soon. Thank you for your swift ac­tions, sis­ter."

"Thank you, Se­nior Broth­er."

"And you... don't move yet. You can stop stop feed­ing qi into your spir­it; I as­sure you, you will be fine."

So Ki'el let go of her Right­eous Cy­cles, feel­ing sud­den­ly faint. She was sure, af­ter every­thing she had just en­dured, that she had put too much aether into her spir­it, though she was not sure what that meant, or what she should have done dif­fer­ent­ly. Sobon had spo­ken of aether and qi as dif­fer­ent... no, she would not know what would be right or wrong even if she had been us­ing qi to pro­tect her­self. She took sev­er­al steady­ing breaths, find­ing that her mouth felt very dry, then asked, "You are a heal­er for the sect?"

"Yes, we have nev­er met. You may call me Se­nior Broth­er Yong." The man moved to where Ki'el could see him and squat­ted down, to be more on her lev­el. "The heal­ing I have used on you can only be used on fresh wounds, but it should re­cov­er you com­plete­ly. That is good; a wound to your spine would oth­er­wise be very se­ri­ous in­deed. What hap­pened to you?"

Ki'el worked her dry mouth a mo­ment, but there was no sali­va to wet it. Al­though the pain was eas­ing, be­tween it and lay­ing on her chest, she found her­self only able to speak a few words at a time. Fi­nal­ly, she just said, "Struck... from be­hind by... an... an­oth­er mem­ber... of the Less­er House. We were... ar­gu­ing."

"Some­one struck you from be­hind, while a Dis­ci­ple was watch­ing?" Yong all but laughed out loud, shak­ing his head wist­ful­ly. "That man won't be stay­ing longer in the Sect, that is for cer­tain."

"He had... friends."

"Many peo­ple think they have friends, un­til those 'friends' dis­cov­er what the true cost of loy­al­ty will be. I re­mem­ber when I was in the Less­er House..." The man looked up at the ceil­ing, but went silent in­stead of con­tin­u­ing. Then, af­ter a mo­ment, "We thought that sev­er­al peo­ple had great pow­er be­cause they could gath­er al­lies, like mind­ed peo­ple. But in truth, they were just des­per­ate peo­ple band­ing to­geth­er. Only one of those peo­ple ever rose to join the Sect, and that was be­cause he was a hard work­er. In truth, the ones who re­main in the Less­er House for long get so des­per­ate that they will latch on to any­one who they think is of a sim­i­lar spir­it--all be­cause they wish to rise. But when that at­tach­ment would have them fall along­side some­one else..." He stood, his head get­ting to where Ki'el could not quite see him com­fort­ably any­more. "It is just as nat­ur­al for them to say, 'I was nev­er one of your peo­ple.' It seems cold, but it is all a part of the same des­per­ate cow­ardice."

Ki'el didn't say more, and Broth­er Yong moved away with­out fur­ther com­ment. Ki'el found that she could not rest or sleep for a long time, and she thought about Xan Bu and des­per­ate peo­ple, but all that she could think was that she was glad her spir­it had not been bro­ken. She did not tru­ly want to save Xan Bu, and had not re­al­ly de­sired to save him when she chose not to strike back at him. She was not even sure that there was any pity in­side of her for him, not only be­cause he struck at her, but be­cause he had struck at Da Chi­an. But she was cer­tain that if she had been bro­ken, she would also have be­come cru­el, and she was glad that had not hap­pened.

Some­where over the next hour or two, as she thought about these things, the stress of the evening caught up with her, and Ki'el fi­nal­ly fell asleep.