[ The image of the cripple is all too real for Ilde. She has seen so many ugly wounds in her time. The caravan of her childhood would have no choice but the leave them behind in the wastes, where if they would wait for nightfall to come and for the shadows to finish what they had started. There were many more in Dreus's palace, sad examples of flesh who could survive nowhere else and so the mad king took a kind of pity on them, let them lie in the shade of his alcazar and be fed, and where at least it was a question as to whether or not he might kill them that day.
Even more than that, however, is the misery that Cathaway had pushed at her, that had filled Ilde with so much anger:
A heavy knife falling, weight and edge driving through a pale finger laid flat against the cutting block. It splits through skin and muscle and nerve. Hacks through bone. Blood paints the blade, then the block. A squeal like pain.
They reinforce it, the Prince and the Pilot. This idea that Adara is now irreparable. Rather than offer the benefit of their own losses, they merely push guilt and pity. Infuriating. Ilde's arms tighten around Angel, burying her face in her hair. ]
Don't think that.
[ Not at all responding to the words that she has said, instead the picture in her mind. ]
cw: gross
Even more than that, however, is the misery that Cathaway had pushed at her, that had filled Ilde with so much anger:
A heavy knife falling, weight and edge driving through a pale finger laid flat against the cutting block.
It splits through skin and muscle and nerve.
Hacks through bone.
Blood paints the blade, then the block.
A squeal like pain.
They reinforce it, the Prince and the Pilot. This idea that Adara is now irreparable. Rather than offer the benefit of their own losses, they merely push guilt and pity. Infuriating. Ilde's arms tighten around Angel, burying her face in her hair. ]
Don't think that.
[ Not at all responding to the words that she has said, instead the picture in her mind. ]
You can be stronger for this.