Kushiel's Dart (Phèdre's Trilogy #1)

by Jacqueline Carey

Lest anyone should suppose that I am a cuckoo’s child, got on the wrong side of the blanket by lusty peasant stock and sold into indenture in a short-fallen season, I may say that I am House-born and reared in the Night Court proper, for all the good it did me.

Such a small thing on which to hinge such a fate. Nothing more than a mote, a fleck, a mere speck of color. If it had been any other hue, perhaps, it would have been a different story. My eyes, when they settled, were that color the poets call bistre, a deep and lustrous darkness, like a forest pool under the shade of ancient oaks.

but the language spoke outside our nation’s bounds is a pitiful thing when it comes to describing beauty. Bistre, then, rich and liquid-dark; save for the left eye, where in the iris that ringed the black pupil, a fleck of color shone. And it shone red, and indeed, red is a poor word for the color it shone. Scarlet, call it, or crimson; redder than a rooster’s wattles or the glazed apple in a pig’s mouth.

And there, of course, betwixt the ebb tide in his wits and the rising tide in his loins, he lost his heart in the bargain.

but this I know is true: When Love cast me out, it was Cruelty who took pity upon me.

Nothing spoils idle pleasure like too much awareness, and the Night Court was built upon idle pleasure.

But there is no saying how events in one place may affect what happens elsewhere, for the tapestry of history is woven of many threads. We needs must study the whole warp and weft of it to predict the pattern on the loom.”

“All knowledge is worth having.” I knew it by rote; if Delaunay had a motto, that was surely it.

“No.” Hyacinthe shook his head with certainty. “If he were, he would surely have been banished, confession or no. The Princess Consort willed it, but he is still welcome at court. Someone protected him in this matter.”

Not how kids talk

Their joining was like a dance.

Now it was his hair that hid them from my sight, spread like a black curtain across her thighs as he parted her cleft with his tongue, seeking the pearl of Naamah hidden in her folds.

Upon second glance, I saw that his white shirt was not canvas but cambric, the linen spun so fine one could barely see the weave, and what I had taken for buckram hose were breeches of moleskin. His knee-high boots were black leather, shined until they gave back reflections.

The power of cloth to convey status.

“That which yields, is not always weak. Choose your victories wisely.”

So I had heard, and so I came to understand, from the despite and desire mingled in him.

As Blessed Elua is my witness, I tried to pay heed to what passed about me and what conversations I overheard, but the slender velvet rope Melisande Shahrizai had set about my neck had severed at last my connection with that far part of my mind that was ever thinking and analyzing at Anafiel Delaunay’s behest, and I was aware only of her hand on the far end of it. When I reached for that calculating corner, I found only the indrawn susurrus of the great wave gathering, and knew myself doomed when it broke.

Subspace

It is a fine line, in all of us, between civilization and savagery. To any who think they would never cross it, I can only say, if you have never known what it is to be utterly betrayed and abandoned, you cannot know how close it is.

It is my observation, though, that happiness limits the amount of suffering one is willing to inflict upon others.

who are sworn to travel the realm, embroidering truth and fable together into one fabric.

It is a human failing, to attribute the best of motives to those we know the least, and the worst to those we love best;

There are those who are awkward in the face of sorrow, fearing to say the wrong thing; to them, I say, there is no wrong in comfort, ever. A kind word, a consoling arm … these things are ever welcome.