Denying desire only made yourself vulnerable to those who were smart enough to see what you couldn’t even acknowledge to yourself.

The girl knew she was no more useful than those dead girls had been. Uglier, too. She pressed her lips together and crouched next to the first elm stump. The only difference between them and her was that she had learned how to catch food for herself. It seemed such a small difference, for two opposite fates.

There was a strange, ill satisfaction there, as if Esen had proved something Lord Wang wanted—but in having proved it, had killed some other part that was still holding out hope.

The sight seemed oddly familiar. It made her think of undressing in her storeroom in the monastery, and how the changed and threatening body she had uncovered had always seemed to belong to someone else. But this invisible agony-hand was undeniably hers, and so was the stump.

She knew that when it came down to it, you survived and died alone. But perhaps there was still a comfort in having someone at your side while it happened.

“But you know what’s worse than suffering? Not suffering, because you’re not even alive to feel it.”

It startled her to hear him say I. It was like reaching for someone’s cheek in the dark, but finding instead the intimate wetness of their open mouth.

Now the only person in the world who knew where she was buried was someone who was no longer a daughter, but who remembered, unwillingly, a little of what it was like to be female.

The body became used to exercise, particular sounds and sensations, or even physical pain. But it was strange how shame was something you never became inured to: each time hurt just as much as the first.