Stacia Stark

one of the defining moments of Arbel's character arc, I think.

I just, I love writing about female friendship, but I feel like, you know,

Women are complicated, friendships are complicated, and I want it to feel real, you know?

And, like, that's what I love.

Like, when you read a book that does it well, it's always really nice.

Yeah.

And I liked the idea of, like, you know, her biggest fear is letting someone in and then losing them the way she lost Cassia, right?

And so in that scene when...

you know, Maeve is in the arena, it's like her worst fear is kind of she's done her best to keep up those walls and she's like, oh, no, too late.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That scene at the beginning where she kind of manipulates him into helping her was really fun to write.

And he, you know, we see throughout the book, he just,

He doesn't want to be there, but there's no way he could let what happened to her happen to Cassia, right?

So that was a really fun dynamic to play with.

And fun might not be the best word, but it was a very interesting dynamic to play with.

No, I think you're right.

Yeah.

I thought that recently when I was reading a book.

I was like, oh, wow, like I think our generation is doing the work and you can kind of tell.