It might have been preferable, Eddis admitted, dryly, if you had thrown off your chains of bondage solely for love of me. It would certainly have been more flattering. Standing so near to him, she was...
If these were death agonies, they were fake ones, Costis thought, and was sure of it when they reached the shallow stair at the far end of the reflecting pool. No one on the verge of death has the str...
If Attolia could look like a queen, Eugenides was like a god revealed, transformed into something wholly unfamiliar, surrounded by the cloth-of-gold bedcover like a deity on an altar, passionless and...
I would very much like to strangle someone. Why don't you go away until I decide it isn't you?
I stayed only two days in the capital. I was welcomed by a cheering citizenry, who threw flowers at my head. It was disconcerting to think I could have put almost any young man in my retinue on a whit...
I never understood why she didn't marry you.The king settled further into the seat with a snort. Maybe the prospect of being driven out of her mind put her off.
I knew I would be in the story somewhere, Eugenides interjected.Oh no, said Phresine, This was a humble servant.Ouch.Though very courageous.Not me, whispered Eugenides to his pillow.
I grieved, but a part of me felt a lightening of a burden that I had carried all my life: that I could never be worthy of them, that I would always disappoint or fail them. As an unknown slave in the...
Even a steadfast enemy was better than a waffler.
Dying would have been so much easier.
Discretion prevented me from saying that I thought she was a fiend from the underworld and that mountain lions couldn't force me to enter her service.
Costis bowed stiffly. I am here to make sure that you stay in bed, Your Majesty, because if this offends you and you order me summarily executed, it is no loss. Politically speaking.
Because you do not believe?Oh, no, said Attolia bitterly. Because I believe and do not choose to worship.
As a ten-year-old boy, the Thief of Eddis could stop a grown man in his tracks with a single look. Where had that look gone?
All my life they had made choices for me, and I had resented it. Now the choice was mine, and once it was made, I would have no right to blame anyone else for the consequences. Loss of that privilege,...
A natural! A natural!
You are wary of treachery?More wary of stupidity.
We are taught to treat a practice sword with all the respect of a real weapon, so no thoughtless mistakes are madeOh... In Eddis, we learn to keep tack of the weapon we have in our hand.
Today, she had yielded the sovereignty of her country to Eugenides, who had given up everything he had ever hoped for, to be her King.
The room was quiet, the others flicking glances at me. I ignored them. After years in Sounis's palaces being eyed with disgust by my uncle and my own father and courtier after courtier, I assure you I...