Words of Radiance

Her skin was pale and dusted lightly with freckles, and her body was nowhere near curvaceous enough to inspire envy. She could change all of this with an illusion. An augmentation. Since Adolin had seen her without, she couldn’t change anything dramatic—but she could enhance herself. It would be like wearing makeup.

She hesitated. If Adolin came to agree to the marriage, would it be because of her, or the lies?

Foolish girl, Shallan thought. You were willing to change your appearance to get Vathah to follow you and to gain a place with Sebarial, but not now?

But capturing Adolin’s attention with illusions would lead her down a difficult path. She couldn’t wear an illusion always, could she? In married life? Better to see what she could do without one, she thought as she climbed out of the carriage. She’d have to rely, instead, upon her feminine wiles.

She wished she knew if she had any.

48. No More Weakness

THREE YEARS AGO

“These are really good, Shallan,” Balat said, leafing through pages of her sketches. The two of them sat in the gardens, accompanied by Wikim, who sat on the ground tossing a cloth-wrapped ball for his axehound Sakisa to catch.

“My anatomy is off,” Shallan said with a blush. “I can’t get the proportions right.” She needed models to pose for her so she could work on that.

“You’re better than Mother ever was,” Balat said, flipping to another page, where she had sketched Balat on the sparring grounds with his swordsmanship tutor. He tipped it toward Wikim, who raised an eyebrow.

Her middle brother was looking better and better these last four months. Less scrawny, more solid. He almost constantly had mathematical problems with him. Father had once railed at him for that, claiming it was feminine and unseemly—but, in a rare show of dissension, Father’s ardents had approached him and told him to calm himself, and that the Almighty approved of Wikim’s interest. They hoped Wikim might find his way into their ranks.

“I heard that you got another letter from Eylita,” Shallan said, trying to distract Balat from the sketchbook. She couldn’t keep herself from blushing as he turned page after page. Those weren’t meant for others to look at. They weren’t any good.

“Yeah,” he said, grinning.

“You going to have Shallan read it to you?” Wikim asked, throwing the ball.

Balat coughed. “I had Malise do it. Shallan was busy.”

“You’re embarrassed!” Wikim said, pointing. “What is in those letters?”

“Things my fourteen-year-old sister doesn’t need to know about!” Balat said.

“That racy, eh?” Wikim asked. “I wouldn’t have figured that for the Tavinar girl. She seems too proper.”

“No!” Balat blushed further. “They aren’t racy; they are merely private.”

“Private like your—”

“Wikim,” Shallan cut in.

He looked up, and then noticed that angerspren were pooling underneath Balat’s feet. “Storms, Balat. You are getting so touchy about that girl.”

“Love makes us all fools,” Shallan said, distracting the two.

“Love?” Balat asked, glancing at her. “Shallan, you’re barely old enough to pin up your safehand. What do you know about love?”

She blushed. “I… never mind.”

“Oh, look at that,” Wikim said. “She’s thought up something clever. You’re going to have to say it now, Shallan.”

“No use keeping something like that inside,” Balat agreed.

“Ministara says I speak my mind too much. That it’s not a feminine attribute.”

Wikim laughed. “That hasn’t seemed to stop any women I’ve known.”

“Yeah, Shallan,” Balat said. “If you can’t say the things you think of to us, then who can you say them to?”

“Trees,” she said, “rocks, shrubs. Basically anything that can’t get me in trouble with my tutors.”

“You don’t have to worry about Balat, then,” Wikim said. “He couldn’t manage something clever even in repetition.”

“Hey!” Balat said. Though, unfortunately, it wasn’t far from the truth.

“Love,” Shallan said, though partially just to distract them, “is like a pile of chull dung.”

“Smelly?” Balat asked.

“No,” Shallan said, “for even as we try to avoid both, we end up stepping in them anyway.”

“Deep words for a girl who hit her teens precisely fifteen months ago,” Wikim said with a chuckle.

“Love is like the sun,” Balat said, sighing.

“Blinding?” Shallan asked. “White, warm, powerful—but also capable of burning you?”

“Perhaps,” Balat said, nodding.

“Love is like a Herdazian surgeon,” Wikim said, looking at her.

“And how is that?” Shallan asked.

“You tell me,” Wikim said. “I’m seeing what you can make of it.”

“Um… Both leave you uncomfortable?” Shallan said. “No. Ooh! The only reason you’d want one was if you’d taken a sharp blow to the head!”

“Ha! Love is like spoiled food.”

“Necessary for life on one hand,” Shallan said, “but also expressly nauseating.”

“Father’s snoring.”

She shuddered. “You have to experience it to believe just how distracting it can be.”

Wikim chuckled. Storms, but it was good to see him doing that.