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October 28 - October 31, 2025
She dared not speak, for to show she knew his language was to forge a link between them, and to betray herself. To betray the fact that just as she was now a witness to his crime, he was a witness to hers.
“All the world is a cage in a young girl’s eyes.”
“Reading,” Ead said lightly. “A dangerous pastime.” Truyde looked up at her, sharp-eyed. “You mock me.” “By no means. There is great power in stories.” “All stories grow from a seed of truth,” Truyde said. “They are knowledge after figuration.”
“Allow me to indulge in a little allegory. Art. Art is not one great act of creation, but many small ones. When you read one of my poems, you fail to see the weeks of careful work it took me to build it—the thinking, the scratched-out words, the pages I burned in disgust. All you see, in the end, is what I want you to see. Such is politics.”
“And protect my books! For the love of the Saint, save my books, Panaya!”
“In Inys, this bird is called the lovejay,” she said. The bird on her wrist gave a merry chirp. “They take only one partner all their lives, and will know their song even after many years apart. That is why the lovejay was sacred to the Knight of Fellowship. These birds embody his desire for every soul to be joined in companionship.”
That is the problem with stories, child. The truth in them cannot be weighed.
“I was only observing how the fiercest warriors can hide behind such gentle faces.”
“You have not seen death, my lord. You have only seen the mask we put on it.”
She picked at the honey-sweet dates and cherries. Tastes of a life she had never forgotten.
“I do not sleep because I am not only afraid of the monsters at my door, but also of the monsters my own mind can conjure. The ones that live within.”
You wear so much armor by daylight that, by night, you can carry it no longer. By night, you are only flesh. And even the flesh of a queen is prone to fear.”
“In darkness, we are naked. Our truest selves. Night is when fear comes to us at its fullest, when we have no way to fight it,” Ead continued. “It will do everything it can to seep inside you. Sometimes it may succeed—but never think that you are the night.”
Her voice was steady, but her face was an ode to fatigue. Ead considered, then reached for her. At first, Sabran stiffened. A moment later, she twined their fingers and held on. No woman should be made to fear that she was not enough.
Their secret was like wine in her.
“Piety can turn the power-hungry into monsters,” Ead said. “They can twist any teaching to justify their actions.”
“To be kin to a dragon,” Nayimathun said, “you must not only have a soul of water. You must have the blood of the sea, and the sea is not always pure. It is not any one thing. There is darkness in it, and danger, and cruelty. It can raze great cities with its rage. Its depths are unknowable; they do not see the touch of the sun.
“How many times have we damned each other now?” “Not nearly enough.”
“I would live alone for fifty years to have one day with you.”
