What Feasts at Night (Sworn Soldier, #2)

by T. Kingfisher

Now they just said, “Can’t help you, sorry,” and prescribed laudanum to help you sleep.

Death no longer shocks me, but I still prefer that it not visit my friends and acquaintances in my presence.

Perhaps it was the trophies that were so upsetting. I have seen that expression in particularly debauched absinthe drinkers, but you hate to see it on a deer.

She needed the money and was grateful to have it and resented both the need and the gratitude.

If you have ever dealt with the possessions of the dead, you probably know what I mean. You take things away and leave behind emptiness, and everything you remove—every sheet and pillowcase, every lost sock and old razor—erases a little bit of the dead person’s footprint in the world. You picture your own home being carted away, piece by piece, hopefully by loved ones and not by strangers.

I sometimes think the fundamental disconnect with civilians is that they think a war is an event, something neatly bounded on either end by dates. What anyone who’s lived through one can tell you is that it’s actually a place. You’re there and then you leave, but places don’t stop existing just because you aren’t looking at them.

What happened in that house on the edge of the tarn was unspeakably awful, but there was nothing supernatural about it. Nature creates horrors enough all by itself.

“May we always have the choice to err on the side of mercy,”