I honestly don’t know what to say about Marnes. He and I didn’t exactly hit it off. He didn’t want me as sheriff. I think he shared that with a lot of people, I guess. I didn’t want the job at first. But then I was told that if the mayor asks you to serve, you serve. And here I am, speaking at Marnes’s burial, in front of people who knew him better than I did. Sad people. I’m not sad. I mean, it’s sad that he died, of course. But his life, their lives, they’re worth celebrating.

SILO 1.05 The Janitor’s Boy

“You’ve heard of animals chewing off a leg to escape a trap? There’s an animal kind of trick. A human would remain in the trap, endure the pain, feigning death that he might kill the trapper and remove a threat to his kind.”

My father charged me once to give you a message if anything happened to him. He feared you might believe he distrusted you. He wanted you to know he never suspected you. He wanted you to know he always trusted you completely, always loved you and cherished you. He said he would sooner have mistrusted himself and he had but one regret—that he never made you his Duchess.

For I am the daughter of Elrond. I shall not go with him when he departs to the Havens: for mine is the choice of Lúthien, and as she so have I chosen, both the sweet and the bitter.

REBECCA FERGUSON