“Mariel,” he said now, red-faced, with a textbook parry that made Mariel want to scream through her clenched teeth. “I do not wish to hurt you. It is unbecoming of a lady—” “I’m going to kill you,” Mariel gritted out. “I’m going to stab you in many and varied locations, and I’m going to let you bleed out slowly, and then—and then I’m going to send your head to your father in a box.” “I find this sort of language very disappointing.”
