"I know my father did awful things," Charlotte said eventually. She was staring down into the dregs at the bottom of her teacup as if she could find some sort of answer in the pattern of the tea leaves.
"Part of me still worries about him," Charlotte confessed. "I wonder if he's adjusted to the food here, and if he's sleeping well wherever he's staying. Is that foolish of me? To still love him for being a good father to me even when he was so terrible to so many other people?"
"No," Jocelynn said softly, doing her best not to think about the dinner waiting for her in her mother's chambers. "I don't think it's foolish at all."
"In the Kingdom of Iron, they would call it a weakness," Adala said. "They have a saying there. 'Crawl if you must, but save yourself.' I spent four years believing it was the only wisdom worth having."
She set her teacup down and laid her hand over Charlotte's on the tabletop.
