" He put his hands on hers. The shadows looked like smoke, in the air, but they pulled back into Cyra’s body like dozens of strings yanked at once.
Cyra’s odd smile was gone, and she was staring at their joined hands.
“What will happen when you let go?” she said quietly.
“You’ll be just fine,” he said. “You’ll learn to control it. You can do that now, remember?”
She let out an airy laugh.
“I can hang on as long as you like,” he said.
Her eyes hardened. When she spoke, it was with gritted teeth. “Let go.”
Akos couldn’t help but think back to something he’d read in one of the books Cyra had put in his room on the sojourn ship. He’d had to read it through a translator, because it was written in Shotet, and it had been called Tenets of Shotet Culture and Belief.
It said: The most marked characteristic of the Shotet people is directly translated as “armored,” but outsiders might call it “mettle.” It refers not to courageous acts in difficult situations--though the Shotet certainly hold valor in high regard--but to an inherent quality that cannot be learned or imitated; it is in the blood as surely as their revelatory language. Mettle is bearing up again and again under assaults. It is perseverance, acceptance of risk, and the unwillingness to surrender.
That paragraph had never made more sense to him than it did right now. "

― Veronica Roth , The Fates Divide (Carve the Mark, #2)