"Are you sorry for them?"
Idena did not repeat it. Squaring the papers again, she gave Priscilla room not to answer, and Priscilla saw the kindness in that and disliked it too.
'Am I?'
She could not say, and the trouble was that she could not say even to herself.
She did not like those girls. She had hated them in that corridor, her cheek near the stone and the braided one's mana grinding at her ribs, and weeks had not taught her a gentler feeling. She did not like them now. The heat had gone out of it, but the certainty had not.
'So that should be the end of it.'
It wasn't, and she knew why. Hatred had given her something to do while they stood in front of her. They were only names on a list now, and she had no idea what to do with them.
'Then what is the problem?'
The more she looked at the question, the less she liked what answered. There was a feeling, and it had been there since she opened the first sheet.
'The problem is…'
