“[color=ffe63f]…What did they do to you, Roaki?[/color]”

She didn’t know, at first, and in a way that was funny. So many years of pain, and ridicule, and shame, and yet she was hard-pressed to recall, in detail, anything specific. There were flashes in her memory, of her cramped room, of the cold stone floors of the castle. She remembered meal after meal eaten alone, listening to the rest of them above her, speaking of their futures, and their duties to the family. She could see their faces—the sneers, the disgust, the pity. She could feel the hollow pit in her stomach when they’d stopped calling her ‘[i]sister[/i]’. 

Before it all, the silence had eaten at her, but eventually she realized it was more that it was [i]cocooning her.[/i] The burn, she knew, was her body melting away, so that it could reform again as something greater, something terrifying and beastly. 

And she remembered the first night, after it was done. The silence didn’t burn anymore, because even in the dark, if she shut her eyes, she could see him sitting up there at the table, alone. Alone, because she’d made him that way. 

For too brief a time, he finally knew what it was like. 

Roaki looked up, not quite to Quinnlash’s eye, but close. Close as she could get. So close. “[color=ec008c]They doubted me,[/color]” she answered coldly. “[color=ec008c]And they were right anyway, but when I’m hanged it won’t matter. [i]Nothing[/i] can undo what I did. The whole world’ll know that if I’m weak, then the [i]mighty[/i] House Tormont, Sword of Aridea, Bane of Aridea, fell to a weakling.[/color]”