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Chapter Sixty-Four
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Children of Virtue and Vengeance, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Power and Systems of Oppression
Cycles of Violence
Tradition and History
Love vs. Duty
Summary
Analysis
Zélie and Roën make it back to the sanctuary in the early morning. In his native language he tells Zélie she’s home. His eyes widen when Zélie clumsily repeats the phrase. Zélie tells herself to let Roën go as they discuss Zélie’s decision to go with Roën and the elders tomorrow. Roën fingers Zélie’s hair and touches her neck. Zélie tells him that he’s not really so heartless. Roën insists this isn’t true. Zélie says she mistakenly fell for a monster—Inan—before, but Roën says she just fell for the wrong one. He kisses her forehead and walks away.
Roën conceptualizes himself as a monster because he’s a mercenary, which requires him to unfeelingly kill others or do other unsavory acts for money. Zélie is right; Roën isn’t entirely heartless, as evidenced by taking Zélie to ride the whale and his desire to make her laugh. Being able to see that Roën can be both tender and a monster makes him more human to Zélie, and makes him look more like a viable romantic partner.
Themes
Zélie asks Roën to stay with her. They kiss as they enter Zélie’s room. As Roën gently touches the scars on Zélie’s back, Zélie hears herself scream, sees Saran’s face, and feels shooting pain in her back. She pushes Roën away. Roën steps away, insisting that they don’t have to do anything, but Zélie spits that she doesn’t care about Roën: he’s just a mercenary for hire, while Inan was a king with a purpose. It’s the only way she knows to keep Roën away and protect herself. Roën leaves, hurt. Zélie sobs and thinks that the silence hurts more than her scars.
Zélie’s experience of panic here happens because her only experiences of intimacy have led to intense trauma—in the case of Inan, being close to him led to Saran carving “maggot” into her back. While this reaction is normal to a triggering situation, it doesn’t make it any less painful for Zélie or Roën: she’s still done major damage to their relationship and their trust in each other, but this is all she knows.
Themes
