Chapter 21

• Opening my eyes, I lay there staring at the ceiling. I didn’t know how long I’d slept, but I had. This wasn’t all in my head. I’d decided. There was no way I could dream up how good soaking in the tub had felt. I’d never actually seen one of those deep tubs with the fancy feet either, so I couldn’t have imagined it. Or this bed. I most definitely could not dream how comfortable this bed was. Realizing that helped me to understand that there was no way I could come up with the people I’d met in the past day. Even the deepest recesses of my mind didn’t have images of giant men.
• The ceiling was covered in an ornate pattern. There wasn’t a single stain or crack. Why would someone make a ceiling that fancy? I turned just my head and looked around the room, then back to the ceiling. I supposed it was so one could lay here and look at it.
• Lifting my arm, I studied the red rubber band around my wrist. An inhibitor to block skills. Skills. I still wasn’t willing to label my curse as a skill. These people had given me the option to hear people’s thoughts or not. I couldn’t even picture what my life would have been like if I’d had this all my life. The last three, since I’d been out of the asylum, the minds of crazy people hadn’t been as hard, but being able to walk into a crowd while having this would have made things easier. I lowered my arm. Then again if I hadn’t had this skill I wouldn’t be as good with the bow or knives and I valued the ability to defend myself—or others as it turns out.