“I think,” Chaol said, and Sorscha turned, brows high, ready to get to work. “I think,” he said again, smiling faintly, “that this kingdom could use a healer as its queen.”
But the teacher had been right about one thing: violence breeds. Someone pulls a trigger, sets off a bomb, drives a bus full of tourists off a bridge, and what’s left in the wake isn’t just she’ll casings, wreckage, bodies. There’s something else. Something bad. An aftermath. A recoil. A reaction to all that anger and pain and death.