(Our circumstance requires one of us to be the end of the other.)

"There is nothing... wrong, in killing someone who would have killed you, had you not killed them first," Rae murmurs. Two years ago, she would not have been able to say that with any certainty. She knows more of war, now. "One's... I don't know what to call it, one's drive to survive... requires it. One shouldn't have to regret fighting for survival, but that doesn't mean there isn't horror to it."

She knows that, too.

"And you see something of your brother in Javert," Rae murmurs, drifting her fingers through his dark hair.