The Queen of Attolia (The Queen's Thief #2)

by Megan Whalen Turner

It was like him, if he had to have a thing, to have the fanciest of its kind. Eddis thought he looked like a well-dressed funerary ornament.

“Power. What men like best for themselves and least in their women.”

The secretary shrugged, too wise to say that he sympathized with the barbarian queen as her choices grew fewer and her freedom slipped away.

He had resisted as hard as he decently could being put in command of the Thief. He had pointed out to his sovereign, with glibness taking the place of tact, that the Thief had never so far as he knew been in the command of anyone.

perverse because she didn’t know if she wanted the shadows to be empty or not.

Don't. So help me gods, don't do it. I refuse to root for a romance between a maiming victim and his attacker.

“I want to be king of Attolia,” he said.

Godsdammit

He had cried in breathless, racking sobs that had gone on and on, long after she’d thought he would have exhausted himself. Finally he had slept, but the queen had not. The sound of his tears had kept her from sleep that night and woken her from nightmares since the evening she’d heard them.

Oh, my heart breaks for her. :eyeroll:

“Before you make a decision,” he said, “I want you to know that I love you.”

UGH

“Calf love doesn’t usually survive amputation, Your Majesty.”

This is weird and gross. And Stockholm syndrome-y

“Nahuseresh, if there is one thing a woman understands, it is the nature of gifts. They are bribes when threats will not avail.

“He had to be forcibly dissuaded from strangling his son.” “So have we all from time to time,” Eddis said seriously.

The uncomfortable thought came to mind that she would rather sell Eugenides into slavery than marry him into the court of Attolia.

Her minister of war, unwilling to forget that the queen of Attolia had maimed his son, was reserved to the point of outright hostility.

Still can't believe he's the only one.

What a fool to fall in love with someone after she had cut his hand off.

Gee.

“How can you understand?” Attolia asked as she turned to face Eugenides’s queen. “He hasn’t lied to you.” Eddis looked at her, surprise showing in her face. “Of course he has,” she said. “He lies to you?” Attolia asked. “Constantly,” said Eddis. “He lies to himself. If Eugenides talked in his sleep, he’d lie then, too.”

“You have to believe him, because he’s going to have your entire palace up in arms and your court in chaos and every member of it from the barons to the boot cleaners coming to you for his blood, and you are going to have to deal with it.” Attolia smiled. “You make him sound like more trouble than he is worth.” “No,” said Eddis thoughtfully. “Never more than he is worth.”

Are you insane?” “No more than usual, I think.”

She thought of the hardness and the coldness she had cultivated over those years and wondered if they were the mask she wore or if the mask had become her self. If the longing inside her for kindness, for warmth, for compassion, was the last seed of hope for her, she didn’t know how to nurture it or if it could live.

“Trust me. Just read it. Then read it again, because it will not be the same river twice.”—Lois McMaster Bujold

KNIFE DANCE BY MEGAN WHALEN TURNER