[ katsa struggles for a moment with how to answer gendry's own question, and whether she should answer it at all. but she speaks. ]

My Grace didn't announce itself until I was eight years old. It was at one of my uncle's dinners; he'd seated me with some Middluns lord, a distant cousin of mine. His breath was foul and he sat too close. [ she was grimacing at her locket, angry as she remembered it ] He began talking about my eyes, wondering what my Grace was: singing, dancing. Pretty performances for him to look at. Then he put his hand on my thigh, and I didn't like it. I felt threatened. So I shoved the bones of his face back into his brain.

[ she hadn't meant to kill him—she'd only meant to stop him, to protect herself. but that didn't matter, for it had happened. ]

Most women in my world don't get to protect themselves when they feel that fear, when they feel unsafe. They have to rely on their fathers, brothers, but their fathers and brothers aren't always there to look after them. They've as much right as I do to protect their own lives no matter what happens, Grace or no. So why shouldn't it matter?