He stopped for a moment, his voice rough and choked, and Katsa fought against his distress, fought to keep it from touching her. She found that she was gripping the window frame very hard.

“You would have me friendless, Katsa,” he finished quietly. “You would have my Grace control every aspect of my life and shut me off from every happiness.”

She didn’t want to hear these words, words that called to her sympathy, to her understanding. She who had hurt so many with her own Grace, and been reviled because of it. She who still struggled to keep her Grace from mastering her, and who, like him, had never asked for the power it gave her.

“Yes,” he said, “I didn’t ask for this. I would turn it off for you, if I could.”

Rage then, rage again, because she couldn’t even feel sympathy without him knowing it. This was madness. She could not comprehend the madness of this situation. How did his mother relate to him? Or his grandfather? How could anyone?

She took a breath and tried to consider it, piece by piece.

“Your fighting,” she said, her eyes on the darkening courtyard. “You expect me to believe your fighting isn’t Graced?”

“I’m an exceptional natural fighter,” he said. “All of my brothers are. The royal family is well-known in Lienid for hand fighting. But my Grace—it’s an enormous advantage in a fight, to anticipate every move your opponent makes against you. Combine with that my immediate sense of your body, a sense that goes beyond sight—you can understand why no one has ever beaten me, save you.”

She thought about that and found she couldn’t believe it. “But you’re too good. You must have a fighting Grace as well. You couldn’t fight me so well if you didn’t.”

“Katsa,” he said, “think about it. You’re five times the fighter I am. When we fight, you’re holding back—don’t tell me you aren’t, because I know you are—and I’m not holding back, not a bit. And you can do anything you want to me, and I can’t hurt you—”

“It hurts when you strike me—”

“It hurts you for only an instant, and besides, if I hit you it’s only because you’ve let me, because you’re too busy wrenching my arm out of its socket to care that I’m hitting you in the stomach. How long do you think it would take you to kill me, or break my bones, if you decided to?”

If she truly decided to?

He was right. If her purpose were to hurt him, to break his arm or his neck, she didn’t think it would take her very long.

“When we fight,” he said, “you go to great pains to win without hurting me. That you usually can is a mark of your phenomenal skill. I’ve never hurt you once, and believe me, I’ve tried.”

“It’s a front,” she said. “The fighting is only a front.”

“Yes. My mother seized on it the instant it became clear that I shared the skill of my brothers, and that my Grace magnified that skill.”