pernicious

the very man who was planning to kill the Father!”

She was harder than he was—strong in ways he would never know.

Vin was the center of attention. Women pandered to her, hung on her words, and looked to her as a model.

He folded his arms behind his back and didn’t look at her, as if trying to pretend that he had not lost control.

“Because I realized that you trusted me,” Vin said. “Trusted me as nobody ever has before. On that night when I fought Zane, I decided I had to give my trust to you. This force that’s destroying the world, we have something it can never understand. I don’t necessarily need your help; I need your trust. Your hope. It’s something I’ve never had of my

but he’s the one who didn’t survive! He let himself become a martyr. He committed suicide. How is that surviving?”

“I do.”

“That’s exactly one-sixteenth of those who fell to the sickness, my lord,” Demoux said. “Thirty-six died, but the other three hundred and twenty-seven of us stayed sick exactly sixteen days. To the hour.”