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A beautiful thing about stories is that they exist forever suspended in time. Opening a book transports you instantly to the time and place on the page. It’s easy to turn back the clock on the years, to flip to page one and begin the journey all over again. It turns out I wasn’t quite done with the Kaul family after all. But perhaps, they are done with me. After everything tragic and triumphant they’ve been through, they deserve their rest.
god help me
“There’s a cost to every decision we make, Mada, but the further we go for the clan, the more we give. You should remember that. Ask yourself: How far are you willing to go?”
Lan wondered how much mental energy Hilo expended sizing up every man he met, shifting them around in his mental hierarchy and coming to favorable conclusions about his own odds. “This is his brother’s funeral, for gods’ sake,” Lan scolded in a hiss.
“The clan is a brotherhood of warriors, and so long as you give your loyalty, you will never be alone.”
The only people who need to agree are the two of you, and Lan.
Kehn and Tar followed Kaul Hilo because he wasn’t a man of half measures.
“If I saw someone tugging their earlobe at you, I’d break their fucking fingers.”
:catscream:
It was a common trait of the Maik siblings, perhaps, to be unusually devoted and resilient. To not lie down, and to take no shit from the world.
“I’ll beat all of them, so you won’t have to worry. I’ll always come back to you.
WHERE WAS THIS IN THE MAIN SERIES FONDA!!!
“I’m going to bring you into the clan. I’ll make you my wife and give you children.” “I know.” She rolled over to face him, their noses nearly touching on the pillow, her luminous eyes pools in the dark. “I was only thinking of how strong I’ll have to become, to be with you forever.”
So often stories focus on the start of a romantic relationship, and less commonly on the end of one; rarely, it seems, do we see a couple in a fantasy novel go through ups and down together, evolve together, age together, stay together. Hilo and Wen complement and enable each other. They love and support each other. They hurt and betray each other. They are strong individuals, but neither would be who they are without the other.
She had learned that men, especially older men, reacted to the sight of a twenty-two-year-old woman wearing as much jade as a senior Finger in about the same way she imagined they might react to her openly carrying a machine gun—with nervous surprise, unseemly flirtatious interest, and undisguised concern that she might carelessly injure herself or others with such a dangerous weapon, one not made for delicate hands.
Shae scowled. Hilo would not hesitate to act on what his gut told him.
That was not, she reminded herself, necessarily a good thing.
Hilo-jen’s sister. Kaul Sen’s granddaughter. Someday, Shae promised herself sourly, people would call her by her own name instead of recognizing her in relation to the men of her family. One day, they would address her properly as Kaul-jen, as they did her brothers. That day was not today.
On Kekon, however, there were two crimes, the two absolute lowest forms of theft, that were always punished by immediate execution: grave robbing and jade smuggling.
“I’m sorry you didn’t get to see more of Janloon after all, Mr. Rostof,” Shae whispered sadly. “But I think you saw enough of it.”
No matter how much jade Kaul Sen awarded to his granddaughter, no matter how many parties he threw for her or how much he bragged about his “best grandson” to his friends, he could not, even as the Pillar of the clan, give her true greenness, the simple respect accorded by and to men, friends and enemies alike, honestly earned.
