and I ran back to that hollow again
the moon was just a sliver back then
At first, Etro doesn’t understand. Another daughter? Family had done this? She feels as if her very veins are shriveling inside of her, and she feels dizzy from the blood rushing in her head. Not dead—murdered. He had been taken from her. Etro had only felt rage a handful of times in her life, but she felt it now. She felt it flooding through her body; it was a cleansing feeling, everything else being washed away with that one singular emotion. It took everything from her until she could hardly breathe.
All of a sudden, she understood how Kingslay could smell like life taken.
She felt very much like she was capable of doing just that.
“His daughter did this?” she finally manages to say, and she is surprised that the stability of her voice. It does not crack the way it does in her mind. Instead, she feels frighteningly calm. Her vision clears and the anger simmers in her stomach, making the rest of the world slow down to a crawl. “Who?”
She doesn’t know what she would do with the information—has no idea if she is capable of carrying out the violent needs that stretch from her marrow to the tips of her nerves—but she has to know. She has to know the name so that she can etch it in her bones and whisper it at night. She has to know who to direct this fiery fury at so that she does not break from it. She needed a target. She needed to know who to hate.
and I ached for my heart like some tin man
when it came, oh, it beat and it boiled and it rang