He didn’t know why he cared, why it was important.
Chaol closed his eyes for a moment. “A part of me will always love her. But I had to get her out of this castle. Because it was too dangerous, and she was …
“She was not becoming anything different from what she always was and always had the capacity to be. You just finally saw everything. And once you saw that other part of her …,” Dorian said quietly. It had taken him until now, until Sorscha, to understand what that meant.
“You cannot pick and choose what parts of her to love.”
He pitied Chaol, he realized. His heart hurt for his friend, for all that Chaol had surely been realizing these past few months. “Just as you cannot pick which parts of me you accept.”
“You do. But what’s done is done, Chaol. And there is no going back, no matter how hard you try to change things. Like it or not, you played a role in getting us all to this point, too. You set her down that path, to revealing what and who she is, to whatever she decides to do now.”
“You think I wanted any of this to happen?” Chaol splayed his arms. “If I could, I would put it all back to the way it was. If I could, she wouldn’t be queen, and you wouldn’t have magic.”
“Of course—of course you still see the magic as a problem. And of course you wish she wasn’t who she is. Because you’re not really scared of those things, are you? No—it’s what they represent. The change. But let me tell you,” Dorian breathed, his magic flickering and then subsiding in a flash of pain, “things have already changed. And changed because of you. I have magic—there is no undoing that, no getting rid of it. And as for Celaena …” He clamped down on the power that surged as he imagined—for the first time, he realized—what it was to be her.
“As for Celaena,” he said again, “you do not have the right to wish she were not what she is. The only thing you have a right to do is decide whether you are her enemy or her friend.”
- Queen of Shadows by Sara J. Maas
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