The Ragpicker King (The Chronicles of Castellane, #2)

by Cassandra Clare

“Then puzzle me out,” he said, and was gone, into the shadows.

“Prosper Beck,” Kel said sharply. “How do you know so much about Prosper Beck?” She shook her head. “I am grateful to you for helping me, Sword Catcher. But I cannot tell you.”

Oh? Ana and Anjelica? What is their end game???

“On the contrary, one’s choice of disguise reveals a great deal,”

“Did the Prince ask you to deliver it to me?” she asked, picking it up. She could not help but recall what the Prince had said to her: Not all messengers can be trusted. Had he trusted the Counselor? “No,” Mayesh said shortly.

“This has gone too far. We agreed on a prank, a joke on the Sarthians, not the disaster that was the Shining Gallery. You used that against us, and now you wish us to do even worse.” Us. Kel’s whole body tightened. Who was us?

Perhaps you were born for such a time as this.”

Ahhh and I read this line on Purim ❤️

During the time of the Empire, the deep-purple dye had been extracted from the shells of sea creatures that had thrived on Tyndaris before the island drowned beneath the waves. They were extinct now, and the only cloth of that color was the property of House Aurelian.

Like Tel Dor

But they stole it. It was never theirs to begin with.”

“All night I heard it crying out. It was caged. It begged for freedom, but all I could give it was death. They would never have freed it. It was the source of all their power.”

“Atma, sur az koval!”

“I have never trusted myself,” he said. “But I think, if you did—I could.”

Kel was never supposed to be harmed, Jerrod, you ought to have known that.

“Malgasi hate every one of us. They’re the threat. Not Beck.”

“I’ll tell you,” he said hoarsely. “I swear it, but—I must go now.”

and she knew he was wholly hers in this moment. That he belonged to her, to this space between and around them.

Around her throat gleamed her heart-shaped locket.

What did you do with the amulet, by the by?” “It’s in good hands,”

Hatred of the Aurelians. Why, I cannot say, but it is pure as white fire. They will not rest until the Aurelian line is burned away to ashes.”

How can a people who have been forced into exile inflict exile on their own?

“But I cannot. I cannot offer you what the lowest peasant in the street could offer you. Myself. Because myself does not belong to me. It belongs to Castellane.”

“I think you can hurt him more than he has ever been hurt,” said Kel. “And even if I cannot stand in front of him to block this blow, I can stand beside him while he endures it.”

I have told him which guard he must speak to in order to be let into Marivent.

They were the whispers of something tortured. Tormented. Begging for my help. I began to see it when I closed my eyes. A shadowy creature, trapped in darkness.

But Fausten was not loyal. I do not know when he turned back toward Malgasi, or what they promised him to betray me. I know now that he began to alter the formulation of my medicine. My mind subsumed itself in dreams, in the music of stars, in the whisper of wings. I heard them awake and asleep. I began to feel the phoenix stir inside me, and I yearned to let it free.

His brown cloak was missing, and the shelves were also a mess, as if he or Conor had riffled through them in a hurry, looking for something—

“The gematry you performed was so powerful that some of it tore its way free of you, of the Source-Stone.

Maharam, and he said that the Goddess would have been able to withstand the use of such power and would not have collapsed as you did. That whatever source of power you used, it must have been corrupt and evil.”

Andreyen said, and there was an odd bitterness in his tone.

“I understand because I, too, was exiled in my youth. I, too, wished to learn the ways of magic and was punished for it.

ASHER!?

“That,” said Kel, “is not the disservice you are doing me.”

“Some Laws are foolish,” Mayesh said roughly, and joined her on her way out.

In some way he had not before, Kel thought, he resembled Lilibet.

You have taken yourself away from me. And I can never forgive you for that.”

You never seemed to need anything from me. I thought that meant I was safe with you,

Kel felt Conor’s lips brush his forehead and something cold settle around his neck.

“Really?” said Kel. “Whose friend? Because I know who Beck is now. Who she really is.”

In that same fashion—more instinct than logic—he trusted this, with a trust that went as deep as his own blood and bones.

But I had no choice. They have to think I’m all alone. Can you understand that?