And what I felt, because I'm me, was violently irritated, not at her but at Mum, who wasn't even here to look at me with that shining warm smile in her whole face that she gets once in a very rare while when I've made her really happy. Like the time when I was twelve and we had an enormous fight about cheating, because I didn't see why I shouldn't just take the last bit of life out of this bird I'd found dying in the forest anyway, and I stormed away and then came back to the yurt very grudgingly an hour later and told her even more grudgingly that I'd just sat in the trees with the bird until it died, and then buried it. I hated having to tell her, I hated how happy it made me seeing her face glow. It felt like giving in, and I hated giving in more than anything.

— A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik (The Scholomance, #1)