"I don't want to think about what I would've become if I'd taken his offer. I wouldn't have been me any more. But facing him, seeing how he festered, it really showed me... We're going to hurt sometimes, that's part of life. But hurting for the ones we love, hurting because we let ourselves love... letting ourselves care, that's what keeps us from turning into a creature like Saundor." And Vex could have. If she hadn't had Vax. If she hadn't realized that her heart had given itself away before she noticed. If she hadn't learned to look beyond herself, to see the broken spaces in Snow and Kash and Zahra that mirrored her own and wanted to fill them.

"And if I wind up achy and crampy from sitting too long, I'll let Percy draw me a bath and give me a massage later," she added more lightly. Thinking about Saundor always dragged the mood way down, and today already sucked enough balls.