[ This time there is heat, a force that sends Alexandrie to her feet and forward to grip a shelf at the wall. ]
He saved Colin’s life at the risk of his own. He wept when all his desperate art could not save his mother’s. He ignored his own exhaustion to heal the blisters on my feet each night we walked back to Kirkwall from Minrathous. He taught me everything he knew of combat so I could protect myself when he could not. Held me through every fear, kissed me like I was a miracle.
[ Her shoulders are hunched tightly, her fingers flexing into the wood. ]
Bastien is kind, yes. But he also cultivated the show of his kindness as a tool. A weapon. He is a Bard, Byerly. As much as he has shown the true kindness in his heart to you— perhaps to me, perhaps to a few others— he has shown a carefully crafted kindness to win secrets, to keep others at a distance and leave them unsuspecting.
If my husband had chosen kindness as his blade perhaps you would have thought him kind. He did not, and you have never looked past what he made of himself to survive the world he was born to. You never cared to look, and you have never trusted me.
[ A shake of her head, as if she could throw off the passion that grips her. ]
Do not dare think you know him better than I. There are none yet living on this earth who know him better than I.
no subject
[ This time there is heat, a force that sends Alexandrie to her feet and forward to grip a shelf at the wall. ]
He saved Colin’s life at the risk of his own. He wept when all his desperate art could not save his mother’s. He ignored his own exhaustion to heal the blisters on my feet each night we walked back to Kirkwall from Minrathous. He taught me everything he knew of combat so I could protect myself when he could not. Held me through every fear, kissed me like I was a miracle.
[ Her shoulders are hunched tightly, her fingers flexing into the wood. ]
Bastien is kind, yes. But he also cultivated the show of his kindness as a tool. A weapon. He is a Bard, Byerly. As much as he has shown the true kindness in his heart to you— perhaps to me, perhaps to a few others— he has shown a carefully crafted kindness to win secrets, to keep others at a distance and leave them unsuspecting.
If my husband had chosen kindness as his blade perhaps you would have thought him kind. He did not, and you have never looked past what he made of himself to survive the world he was born to. You never cared to look, and you have never trusted me.
[ A shake of her head, as if she could throw off the passion that grips her. ]
Do not dare think you know him better than I. There are none yet living on this earth who know him better than I.