The Theft of Sunlight

I am suddenly and deeply furious, enraged that my body should have been violated so. I have never loved it enough; I realize that now, in the face of having it so abused. My plain features and strong build are mine, just as my turned foot is, born with me and part of who I am.

Sometimes, when you think things are finished, they are only just beginning.

People are stupid wherever you go. That doesn't mean you should never leave home.

How is it possible to be both a gentleman and a monster?

While I would like to think I'm capable of picking a lock, the reality is I have no idea how to proceed other than to stick things into the keyhole and jiggle them about.

I turn to find myself facing a faerie, tall and elegant, with eyes so dark they appear fathomless. I blink. The faerie remains.

Life is always better after you've eaten a biscuit.

I believe going to court is rather like going to war: one must wear the appropriate armor, or expect to be stabbed through and trampled underfoot.

The queen may pretend affection for her daughter, but it’s clear she does not truly understand her.

don’t want to be made to feel less just because my foot is turned one way instead of another. It still bears me forward every day of my life.

I’ve spent a lifetime putting up with cruelty and I’m not afraid to look his viciousness in the face.

She shrugs. “I don’t know if I would have chosen it, if I’d understood,” she says. “We all have ideas about how wonderful it must be to wed a lord, or live at court, or whatever. It isn’t all pretty dresses and gold.

You ought to learn how to fight

One can work with the flow of magic, directing it into new uses and directions, or one can work with the patterns that exist already, replicating those with slight shifts to achieve one's aim.

And, like home, there are all different types of bodies here, tall and short, thick and thin.

I do miss home. I miss my family desperately. I miss Niya's clear gray gaze, and her touches of magic in our food, and the way her hair never quite stays in it's braid.

Damn Bardok for his laughter, and his blades, and his easy violence and uncaring selfishness, chopping off my finger as if he had the right to take what he wished and could throw away the rest. As if such violence was nothing, was only to be expected, because I am a woman and his captive, and there is no law here, not in the prison of his

me? What is that supposed to mean? “You may have abducted me, thrown me in a vile little cell, and have my life in your hands,” I snarl, “but you can keep your insults to yourself. You don’t know the first thing about me.

You’re so predictable,” he says, almost as an apology. “I knew if I put a wounded child in front of you, I’d have you. There’s not a noble lady in the palace who would have seen to the boy herself. But you? Of course you would.

Is he actually blaming me? Him? This despicable excuse for a noble who sells children into slavery?

And as simply as that, I am no longer needed. Everything I have been pushing myself toward these last few weeks has been achieved in this: the establishment of a formal investigation into the snatchers, led by one of the highest nobles of the realm, with the support of the whole royal family.

I look down, relief flooding through me. If the king himself is involved now, surely the snatchers will be stopped. This work will continue, and Berenworth will be properly investigated, and even if the thrice-cursed Circle isn’t brought down, the snatchers themselves will be stopped.

nod, but she’s wrong. I don’t know him at all, not his name, or if he leaves behind a wife, or children, or a grieving mother. I was only thinking of Kirrana, but now someone else has been lost, and there is no bringing him back.

One would think we might also be endangering the common folk by ignoring their pleas and what evidence we do come across that such rumors are not grounded in falsehood.

Or was it in my best interest to allow him to beat me when he wished, year upon year? Or perhaps you think it was in my best interest when you sent the one woman most certain to betray me as my companion on my journey here?

Sheltered as he is by living in the palace, he still doesn’t believe the issue is as big or as real as it is. This isn’t just a couple ships taking a dozen children out of the country every month. It’s much bigger and more devastating than that, and it must, by necessity, be organized.

nod. The mages could even argue that their intention had been one of mercy at the outset, to reduce the impact of the trauma of slavery upon those who escaped. And it would be my argument against theirs, what the truth

I won’t disappear. I’ve never been at risk from the snatchers—they only take able-bodied young women.

I cannot imagine that such a woman really knows about the snatchers, or would protect them while caring so much about her patients. Perhaps I’m wrong. Or perhaps she doesn’t know. I blink away the thoughts. First, I have to ascertain that the Darkness really is an attack, then I can worry about who knows what.

Whatever your reasons for choosing to serve our new princess as attendant, I trust you in them. I trust you to stand by the values and principles your father and I taught you, to do what is right—not just what is easy and desirable,