"He just wants servants like that old British wizard you always read about in the papers’ Mal had said, nostrils flaring, the implication being: she had almost allowed herself to become his whore. His words still stung, the shame they had awaken in her just prompting her forward, making her even more resolute to take the Darkling down, as if she could erase what had happened, as if she could go back to the lie of what her life was before the letter from Durmstrang arrived, before the secrets that were her powers could not longer be kept.