" She laughed harshly. “I don’t need pity from the likes of you, little island fox. Pity is for the weak.” Silence spun out into the darkness all around us. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t like her. At all. And I suppose I could have felt a kind of grim satisfaction about the hardships this rude, brutish, irritating girl had endured. But I didn’t. I couldn’t imagine how that had felt—to have your own kin treat you like a possession. A cow or a cloak or a sword to be sold or bartered away. But then again, wasn’t that what my own father had been willing to do to me? Give me away like some kind of prize to Aeddan? Maybe the Varini girl and I weren’t all that different. “What’s your name?” I asked her finally. “Why?” “I don’t pity you,” I lied. “But I would like to mourn you if the time comes when I have to kill you. And I can’t do that if I don’t know your name.” The blonde girl’s winter-cold eyes narrowed slightly. Then she uttered a sharp laugh and slapped me—hard—on the back. “I am Elka,” she said. "

― Lesley Livingston , The Valiant (The Valiant, #1)