This was chapter one.

The grab, then the instant remorse, then the apology, then the excuse — I’m under so much pressure — the whole choreographed sequence that abusers run, the one that trains a victim to accept escalating violence by wrapping each incident in contrition.

If I had been the woman Percival thought I was, I would have absorbed it.

I would have told myself he didn’t mean it, that he was stressed, that it wouldn’t happen again, that the sweetness afterward was the real him and the grip was the aberration.

And the next time it would be a little worse, and the apology a little shorter, and step by step over months and years I would have been walked down the same road that led to a plastic stool and a cracked bowl.

I recognized it because Yvaine had shown me where the road ended.