I couldn’t believe what I was hearing from her. If I had said it, it would have been treason. But she said it as if it were the commonest sense. As if she and I and a child that didn’t exist yet were more important than the King and the Six Duchies combined. I said as much.
“Well,” she asked me, looking at me levelly. “It’s true. To me. If you were my husband and I had our child, that’s how important it would be to me. More important than the whole rest of the world.”
And what was I to say to that? I reached for the truth, knowing it wouldn’t satisfy her. “You would be that important to me. You are that important to me. But it’s also why I have to stay here. Because something that important isn’t something you run away and hide with. It’s something that you stand and defend.”
“Defend?” Her voice went up a notch. “When will you learn we aren’t strong enough to defend ourselves? I know. I’ve stood between Raiders and children of my own blood, and just barely survived. When you’ve done that, talk to me about defending! “
I was silent. Not just that her words cut me. They did, and deeply. But she brought back to me a memory of holding a child, studying the blood that had trickled down her cooling. arm. I couldn’t abide the thought of ever doing it again. But it could not be fled. “There is no running away, Molly. We either stand and fight here, or are slaughtered when the fighting overtakes us.”
“Really?” she asked me coldly. “It isn’t just your putting your loyalty to a King ahead of what we have?” I could not meet her eyes. She snorted. “You’re just like Burrich. You don’t even know how much you’re like him!”