They cannot lower you.

Only you can do that, by believing them.

She had carried that into every hard room of her adult life.

She was carrying it now, in a ballroom full of people who had just tried, and failed, to lower her — and she understood, holding her daughter, that the whole of her job as a mother from this night forward was to hand that same unbreakable thing down to the small sleeping person in her arms.

Chapter 4 — No

Sabetha took a step closer, the collar still extended, her smile widening for her audience.