“I’m thinking,” he says.
And then he leaves.
Chapter 6
Kovan
Thinking,thinking,thinking.
I can’t decide whether I have spent my entire life doing nothing but thinking, or none of my life doing any meaningful thinking.
Possibly both.
Not everything is either-or.
My lack of resolve, though—that stops now.
If I can do nothing else with my life, I will do whatever I can to make Tasa happy.
So a woman as bright as her need never despair like that again.
So she never feels unsafe, unseen, and unvalued in her own home again.
If that means leaving, Iwill.
But not yet.
No one chooses me, she said, and even as I wanted to gather her hand again in mine and squeeze it tight and let her feel how hard I will try to hold on to her, as I wanted to lash out against everyone who had ever made her feel this way, I felt my resolve surge in me for the first time in weeks.
Choosing Tasa is right.
Even if kissing her is no longer available to one such as me.
If choosing her is a thing no one else can do, or has the will to do, then thisisthe scope for a sage.
It is the scope for aperson.
Perhaps she is right, that it is not normal for a person to be so committed after a single day.
But I am not a normal person.
I may learn how to bake bread, but that will never change that I am always, always a sage.
A divine vessel.
But perhaps there is a reason that I, specifically, am the bearer of this power, and it is not simply my capacity for resolve.
Determination can be practiced, and I have. But so has Learned Muka.
It galls me to decide that the dragon was correct, after all.
But I am deciding this because doing so means that Icanbe better for Tasa.
I had previously resolved to mitigate the adverse effect of my presence in her life. Now I have simply been made aware that the challenge was even greater than I realized.
But I am the Sage of Resolve, and I am not giving up.
I am doubling down.
