That was the entire reason to have battle commanders in the first place—so that one man could balance the advantages of logic and reason against the emotional, insane demands of close battle.
Suppose I tell you to fuck off.I will no longer be in a playful mood, it purred. I will come for you. I will kill your blood, your friends, your beasts. I will kill the flowers in your home and the tr...
Subtle and quick to anger? Not so subtle.
Strength is the first virtue, Alera said. That is not a pleasant fact. Its distastefulness does not alter the truth that without strength to protect them, all other virtues are ephemeral, ultimately m...
Souls, I said. I mean, you always wonder if they're real. Even if you believe in them, you still have to wonder: Is my existence just this body? Is there really something more? Do I really have a soul...
Somewhere along the way, their passion had become bottled anger. The anger had fermented into bitter hatred. Then the hatred had fed upon itself, gnawing away at them over years, even decades, until o...
Some men fall from grace. Some are pushed.
Some days, it just doesn't pay to get out of bed.
So, Murphy said. All we need to do is get you up to the top of the pit, and then you’re going to go one-on-four with a bunch of armed FBI agents-cum-werewolves and beat them in time to go up against t...
Not even his father would assert that it was practical to manage five humans. It was a well-known fact that humans became more addled than usual when running in herds.
No one was standing in the shadows smoking a cigarette or looking about with a shifty-eyed gaze. I couldn't see anyone quickly hiding a bloody knife behind his back or twirling a moustache, either. Th...
Molly was arrested. Possession. I blinked at him. She was possessed?
Molly once burned my egg. My boiled egg. I don’t know how.
Michael watched my face closely as we carried her. What? I asked. You aren’t angry, he said. That she’s hurt. Like hell I’m not, I said. It’s coming. After we take care of her. When it’s time. Michael...
Michael smiled at me a little. You’re a good man, Harry. But you’re making the same mistake Nicodemus always has—and the same one Karrin did. What mistake? You all think the critical word in the phras...
Meanwhile the whole of the Realm worries that I may already have seen my last winter, yet have appointed no heir to succeed me—while High Lords like Aquitaine seem ready to swim to the throne through...
Ma’am, the way this usually works is that I ask you a question, and then you tell me a lie. If you give me a dishonest answer before I have the chance to ask the question, it offends my sense of propr...
Many women have earned titles, Your Grace. It doesn't seem to have been a factor in whether or not they actually received them.
Make ready to repel boarders.
Magic is like a lot of other disciplines that people have recently begun developing, in historic terms. Working with magic is a way of understanding the universe and how it functions. You can approach...