He just made himself useful, and I refused to.” Neither one of us were ever people to them. But they’d loved Orion only in exactly the same way they’d hated me. The same way everyone looked at me and my power and saw a monster, because I wouldn’t play along with what they wanted. “They pretended they saw a noble hero, because he’d tried so hard to fit himself into that picture, and they loved the picture: that made his power something for them, something that would help them. Anger and resentment are well-earned, in this world that we discover hinges on pain belonging to someone else but those reaping the rewards, and even moments of friendship are often bittersweet, and there’s not a distraction of a budding love story full of sweet interactions.
And it makes this book dark and angry, and uncomfortable. Le Guin addressed this in her fable The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, and Naomi Novik does it here as well. But it seems the people are willing to recognize that for some things a huge price needs to be paid - as long as someone else pays that price and they get to look the other way, justifying to themselves that someone needs to pay it after all. Ask yourself: is it worth to sacrifice one person for the benefit of many? If you say yes, chances are you’re not the one being sacrificed.
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