Friends care about you. They don't think it's funny when someone tries to hurt you. She'd hardly known Rue two days before he threw himself into a shattered nightmare to win her free of Gulda's enthrallment, because Rue was good, and he cared, even when he hardly knew her.

"I don't think you should have, either. Being a son of death doesn't mean that people should be cruel, or that it doesn't matter if someone hurts you, because something already did." She smiles a little, wry and wavering. "Or it wouldn't matter if anything hurt me now, would it? I had a long time to... get used to the way things were. Sometimes it's hard to believe I broke free at all. But I still try to--believe that it can be better."