Behind the High Society Veil

[addied]

Danai snorted. "Unfortunately it seems that way."

[Cʀʏsᴛᴀʟ]

"Really, though, would you want to be among them?" Artis asked, gesturing out the window, down at the street. Though invisible at night, the stones would be ash-stained and filthy. "What kind of life is that?"

[addied]

Danai looked at him dead in his eyes with utter sincerity. "It's freedom."

[Cʀʏsᴛᴀʟ]

Artis snorted. He hated the life of the nobles, too, but he didn't envy the skaa. "You think their lives involve freedom?" he asked contemptuously. He'd been around skaa, met them, got to know them. He befriended one, albeit a half-blood. He had seen the inner-workings of their day-to-day drudgery and knew with certainty that no one in the Final Empire was free. "The people out there live in tiny tenements, worked half to death, fed little, killed at a nobleman's whim. Most of them are dead inside. You can see it in their eyes, in the way they speak. They've given up hope. That's not freedom."