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He projected his voice a little more clearly than usual, as though he wanted the higher-ups to hear. “Would you like me to fetch a straw, Sebran?” Saff asked earnestly. Sebran frowned. “Why?” “For all your sucking up.”
How could enchantments be used to gather forensic evidence, so that the trial process was more robust, less reliant on hearsay? How could truth elixirs be built into the country’s constitution, so that it was impossible to lie in a court of law? How could the Order develop powerful tracing spells to follow a killing curse back to its origin?
Tiernan was the most self-chastising person Saffron had ever met. She understood why—with a father like Kesven, he was so excruciatingly aware of his every flaw—but it became quite boring after a while.
She picked up rare books from secondhand shops in town, wrapping them in brown paper and gifting them to Nissa, her sworn enemy, because even sworn enemies deserved good reading material.
Why would she ever need to defend herself? She would always feel safe with her father by her side.
“Auria Marriosan has never brewed anything inaccurately in her life.” “You’ve obviously never tried her tea,” Saff quipped, but there was an unspooling feeling in her stomach.
When she’d been led away from the gallery in shackles, Merin had whispered three strangled words: coradin se vidasi. An expression from Ancient Sarthi, roughly translated as: “my heart will not beat until I see you again.”
Nissa’s expression darkened. “So when I used dragonbreath charms on you in bed…you faked it?” Saff laughed roughly. “That’s where your mind goes first?
“If I find out this is all a trick,” her fated lover snarled, “I will not kill you. I will hunt down everyone you have ever loved and bleed them dry in front of you. I will spread their deaths out, so that your suffering is not one fast strike, but a series of fatal wounds you’ll never recover from. And when you beg me to kill you, I won’t. I will force you to live with the pain until your heart eventually dies in your chest. And I will enjoy it.” “Cute speech.” Saff smiled, because she had won, and she did so love to win. “No notes. I accept your terms.”
His flesh opened like a bloody mouth. As he fell, he let go of his daughter. The encased eye rolled to Saffron’s boots, gray iris wide with horror and grief, all of it smeared in her father’s blood.
A cafetière of coffee with a little jug of sugared milk, a mound of flaky pastries stuffed with apricot puree and pistachio cream, a plate of pepper-crusted sheep’s cheese and ripe halved figs, a platter of cured meats and glistening strawberries, half a loaf of sour-risen bread with a tiny bowl of salt-flaked butter.
So they would likely hurt her uncles, but surely they wouldn’t kill them over this. They needed Mal and Merin alive to keep her in line. They wouldn’t waste their ultimate bargaining chip on the destruction of a roulette ball.
What about all the other bargaining chips of the people they have the NAMES of and know you care about?? As someone who supposedly thinks through and is so cunning, you don't think about that??
