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It was as if someone had punched a mailed fist into his gut, reached up under his ribs and torn everything out. It did not feel like a wound, it felt as if he’d been cored.
And then, as he also did every morning, he swung his legs over the side of the bed and got up. Grace was lost to him but he still had duty, and duty would carry him forward.
“We are both still alive this morning,” said Istvhan, as he had said nearly every morning for three years.
A debt was owed. The dead could not pay it, so the living must pay it for them.
Prayer only reminded him of his emptiness.
“Making her comfortable is not so small a thing.”
It was a broad grin, showing a crooked front tooth, and it made her very briefly beautiful.
And when he laughed, it sounded like he was surprised, as if he hadn’t laughed often.
but she was pretty sure that you had to be younger and thinner and possibly have consumption.
“All women are beautiful,” said Istvhan, dismissing this. “It is the job of their lovers to make them feel that way if they do not already.”
People who wanted you to be vulnerable and grateful tended to get very angry when you stopped being vulnerable and didn’t act grateful enough.
Grace’s attempts to explain that she didn’t actually enjoy that very much had caused him to lay siege to her nightly, leaving her staring at the ceiling wishing he would just hurry up and finish his inexpert slobbering and let her go try to get some work done.
Grace had simply chalked it up to there being something deeply wrong with her, as she’d always suspected and Phillip had confirmed.
What if I just want to talk to you because you make me laugh and you live in a jumble of vials and papers with a good-natured weasel and do interesting things?
You will serve the Rat until you die and all debts are paid, and then you will rest under the earth and if there is an afterlife, you may find your god in it at last.
In the darkness of the carriage, his eyes were a blue so deep it looked almost black.
The best he could do—the best he had done—was make sure that the last voice the boy heard was kind.
There was something about poverty that was a little like war. Either you had been there or you hadn’t, and it wasn’t really possible to explain it to anyone who hadn’t.
“He’s decent and honorable and kind and probably says his prayers before bed.”
One of his hands slid down to her waist. She could feel every finger splayed out against her back, as if imprinted there in fire. His arm tightened, pressing her against him, hip to hip, and perhaps it had been too long since she’d felt another body against hers,
“Am I really the only person concerned about the severed head situation in this city?” said Stephen.
Sometimes I still am, and it startles me, because I don’t feel like I have a right to be happy when all this is going on.”
He wanted to wrap his body around hers and breathe warmth into her.
You may have rescued me a time or two, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to fall at your feet. My life is very good and I love it and I don’t wish to see it disrupted.”
But life is what it is, and I wasn’t going to wait around for another asshole to make up his mind over whether or not he wanted me.”
There were things that he could say that would fix it, but nothing that he would say.
“What, of some other man with Beartongue? I’d throw my arms around him and call him my savior. Perhaps we could arrange a duty roster. A woman in her forties with a lot of aggressions to work out is a terrifying glory.”
I won’t grant you absolution for wanting more.”
They had just…talked. Sometimes about terrible, embarrassing things, but the words had come out regardless.
