What Olive should have said then was, ‘Yes, thank you, you’re right. I’ll go to the stables with you and leave forever.’ Then she could have followed Kentamin down to the stables, knocked him over the head with a cast iron tool, and gotten back to the business at hand. But somehow those weren’t the words she heard coming out of her mouth.
“I can’t do that. This is my home.” Something changed in Olive’s expression, too. It would be wrong to say that it softened, but some of the anger drained out of it. Replaced by a certain heaviness… despair? Olive wasn’t sure herself what she was feeling as she continued, “I can’t run away, I can’t put my own life before my country. I’m not just a Connlaothian, I’m a Carwick, I’m my father’s daughter. I've had so much privilege in my life... even since the war... how could I use that to just save myself? My family has always believed, first and foremost, that we are put in the service of our people. How could I take that and throw it away? How could I turn my back on everything my father taught me? Who would I be then? Not Constance Carwick.”
There was something imploring in her eyes. She needed to speak those words to someone. She needed to have someone understand them. It was selfish, she knew, because it was keeping her from her real mission. The one in service of all the words that just came out of her mouth. But in that moment, she couldn’t see that.