But standing there watching a room full of the most powerful people in the country lower their cameras at the lift of one old man’s hand — watching all that terrible influence bend itself, for once, entirely toward the shielding of one frightened child — I understood something I’d been too wounded to see before.
Power itself was never the enemy.
The question was only ever what you aimed it at.
For six years I had run from my own, because I’d been taught to associate it with the people who wielded it against me.
That night I stopped running from it, and began instead to learn how to point it at the only targets worth the trouble.
As they led him past me, Declan turned, his eyes wet.
“I did love you, Talia.”
I shook my head slowly.
“You loved the smaller version of me that never made you feel small.
When you thought I had nothing, you treated me like nothing.