The Traitor Baru Cormorant (The Masquerade, #1)

by Seth Dickinson

“I want to fuck women.”

me too

The Duchess Vultjag stood close by. For a moment Baru thought of their confrontation in the ballroom of the Governor’s House, of Tain Hu’s lure, her fierce dark eyes, her parted lips, her slow breath, and she felt that in some way Tain Hu stood unmasked, and was the more dangerous for it. But she was not afraid.

ugh!

I know what I want. Tain Hu’s eyes, empty as a storm night.

😭😭😭

A terrible unwise unwanted thing trembled alive inside her, a thing she had known for a long time, a thing she could not yet acknowledge nor admit. A vast mistake. The second worst thing she had ever allowed. Perhaps, on review, the worst.

GRRR

A hand on her shoulder. Deerskin glove, smooth through broadcloth and leather and linen and her own flesh. If you close your hand with all your strength, Baru thought, I will crumble into ash. Nothing will remain. What have I done? What have I done? She stood in utter stillness, unable to advance, unwilling to withdraw, the charge of Tain Hu’s touch galvanic, annihilating. Everything she most wanted in this instant would destroy everything she had most wanted for all the rest of her life.

PLEASE 😭😭😭

“Imuira,” Tain Hu whispered, an Urun word, a breath under the rising wind. Her voice trembled with things left long unsaid. “Kuye lam.”

👩‍❤️‍💋‍👩👩‍❤️‍💋‍👩👩‍❤️‍💋‍👩

WARMTH. She tried not to take it apart. Warmth around her. The tent. The furs. Stop, she thought. Go back. Sleep. Don’t think. Warmth in the circle of her arms. Pressed beneath her chin. Warmth in her heart. “Mm,” Tain Hu said. “Hello. Your Excellence.” The contented slits of her eyes closed again. The weight of her body had made Baru’s left arm numb. She turned a little, so that they would fit together more perfectly, and pressed her nose and lips into the join of Baru’s neck and jaw. Her breath went out in a long sigh. For one more moment: bliss.

😔

She wants more than all else to smile, and to answer the last thing Tain Hu ever said to her, that smiling sleepy greeting: hello. Hello yourself, imuira. Kuye lam. In an orgy of self-punishment, between swallows of salt, she looked up exactly what it meant, to be sure of her memory. It brought her as close to the edge as she has ever come.

👹👹👹 i’m gonna cry and throw up!

Good-bye, she thinks. Good-bye, kuye lam. I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood.

AHHHH 👹👹👹👹🤺🤺🤺🤺🤺