But I understood, looking at her in that chair, that a rescue would have left something essential undone.

For years these people had made Yvaine an object — a thing to be beaten, a thing to be used, a thing whose father was a lever, a thing without agency of her own.

To swoop in and save her would have been, in its own gentler way, one more thing done to her, one more time she was acted upon rather than acting.

What she needed was not to be rescued.

What she needed was to be a partner in her own liberation — to be the one who photographed the ledgers, who cracked the safe, who walked into that ballroom under her own power and said her own name.

She needed to get her agency back, and you cannot hand someone their agency; they can only take it.