[... This isn't the first time she's heard something like this. Was she supposed to be happy, that these women in other worlds had such opportunities? Was it supposed to bring her some sense of relief? All she can feel is bitterness, to hear that women who were not her were treated better. If it were just her world, the only world that surely existed... Then she could simply be resigned, that it was just the way of life and the sexes. But if it were different elsewhere? If her life could have been that different were she just born under a different star?

Then it meant that the men of her world should be capable of being better. They just decided not to be.]

... My brother would be sold as a warrior with no issue, and yet still he risked his reputation and opportunities to attempt and ensure I was as well.

[... He'd been the only one. The only one in the stables she'd trusted, and in return for his loyalty... She had made of him a traitor's brother. If she failed in her last mission, his bloodline was tainted. If she succeeded, then... his future was in flux, without her, without a master... and she could only hope that he might join the village of jinba in her absence, but with no guarantee...]

Yet I barely rewarded him for his loyalty. To acknowledge our connection publicly would only make it seem as if I were incapable of proving myself on my own, it would just be another reason to doubt a mare--

[There is something about how Liem speaks in this moment that pleases her slightly, though, even though she is distracted enough by her own difficulties to notice it is because of his tense.]

... That is what I mean.

[He had cared beyond what she deserved. And look what it had gotten him. (Look where it had gotten her. And Liem, too.)]