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‘His frailty made his unearthly handsomeness all the more ephemeral,’ et cetera, et cetera, the word mewled fifteen pages later, the word nipple one page after that?”
Sometimes I think you look like a twig’s funeral.
“John, you dog.” “An absolute bombshell,” said God. He looked deeply into Augustine’s eyes, took another slug of wine, and then said in graveyard tones: “Though maybe not quite such a bombshell as your mother.”
arm, and to watch the Prince Undying gamely cuff him back. Part of your brain temporarily calcified into atheism.
THAT WAS THE CUE?” Your voice sounded humiliatingly high-pitched. “Harry,” said Ianthe, thankfully also a trifle strangled, “when three people start kissing, it is always a cue. A cue to leave.” You said, “I feel unwell.” “Yes. Yes, me too,” she said heatedly, in unexpected accord. “That was disgusting, to say the least. Old people should be shot.”
The Saint of Joy and the Saint of Patience were—distracted—with another matter, that matter being God and a heretical three-way division of saliva. Ianthe had walked away from you, all split lips and gay loneliness;
“Kill me all you like. I would know you in the blindness of my eyes … in the deafness of my ears … as a shadow smudged against the wall, annihilated by light … stop. Not here. Not now. Let it go, love. I just want the truth … after all this time.” Ortus dropped his hand and said, with intent: “Just tell me—back then—why you brought along the ba—”
You were an unfilled hole, but even a hole might be content in its emptiness.
A hole might also be filled with worms.
They were the eyes of a winter season without any promise of spring.
But you were always too quick to mourn your own ignorance. You never could have guessed that he had seen me.
Even the devil bent for God to put a leash around her neck
“And miss out on the chance to die? I’ve been wandering these halls at three o’clock in the morning, saying at the top of my voice, ‘It would be terrible to be shot,’
you poor brokenhearted sad sack—you fell deeply asleep.
Dominus illuminatio mea et salus mea, quem timebo? God is my light.
So I’m shut in here—walled in, really—to prevent the Nine Houses becoming none House, with left grief.”
DID U SERIOUSLY
“Are you sure you want to go with—that one? Let’s go through all the other, less awkward ones first. How is a baby made? I can do that, easy. I mean, I don’t want to, but I’m ready. I have this little book about babies, bodies, friends, and family. Are you and Ianthe being safe?”
No star hung so still as you did then, at the end of its hard hydrogen burn, breathlessly waiting to slough off its outer layer.
And you were angry. You were always such a little bitch when you were angry.
And you walked to your death like a lover.
“Time to absolutely fuck you up.”
It tickled her fancy to imagine Harrowhark falling asleep crying, like any lovelorn child. What a fool. What a destructive, romantic, ridiculous act. It was always a certain kind of ass who approached love like that—a certain kind of very good, talented ass, who had been overly used to their hands on the reins and never could cope when they were taken off—nor had the personality to put them back on again. Ianthe had that type of personality. And she had a few years on Harrow. “Someday I’ll marry that girl,” she said aloud. “It might be good for her.” And: “Probably not, though.” And then
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She was the kindling for the arson taking place in her heart, her brain dry wadding for the flames, her soul so much incandescent gas.
“If I forget you, let my right hand be forgotten,” her mouth was saying. “Add more also, if aught but death part me and thee.” And, unsteadily: “Griddle.”
Which weren’t that thick. I’m just amending here; your fingers are fine.
I lined up your front foot with your back ankle, thumb wrapped low around the hilt of your sword, which proves that you can put the swordfighter into the necromancer but you can’t, wait, hang on.
A sword doesn’t hold an edge on its own, you sack of Ninth House garbage. I didn’t know I’d have to say, If you dip a sword into melty bone, the metal gets more pitted than an iron mine, you cross-patched necromantic shit.
I think the main thing I should have said was, You sawed open your skull rather than be beholden to someone. You turned your brain into soup to escape anything less than 100 percent freedom. You put me in a box and buried me rather than give up your own goddamned agenda. Harrowhark, I gave you my whole life and you didn’t even want it.
probably because I am a good girl and you are an evil nun,
You could always leave everything else behind, but you never got rid of being so absolutely fucking goddamn sad.
This was your shell, but it was all filled up with me. God, the double entendres were hard to resist.
She had been outplayed by Palamedes Sextus, outgunned by Cytherea the First, undone by Gideon Nav.
ONE FLESH, ONE END. G.
THE ONLY THING OUR CIVILISATION CAN EVER LEARN FROM YOURS IS THAT WHEN OUR BACKS ARE TO THE WALL AND OUR TOWERS ARE FALLING ALL AROUND US AND WE ARE WATCHING OURSELVES BURN WE RARELY BECOME HEROES.
but these motherfuckers had a hunger that only thumbs could satisfy.
At the end, we were left in a sea of dead space bees, and you were impossibly okay. Your arms didn’t even hurt, not anymore. You didn’t have your original thumb and I’d touched your intestines, which is usually what, fourth date, but you were fine.
Lemon-mouth Prime:
The fuck was I going to do, regrow your thumbs at her?
remembered that Palamedes Sextus had made a war of his whole life
“The only thing that ever stopped me being exactly who I wanted,” she said, “was the worry that I would soon be dead … and now I am dead, Reverend Daughter, and I am sick of roses, and I am horny for revenge.”
psychopomp.
“What was your name again? Goblin? Gonad? Help me out here.”
“You’ve got two short minutes left before I punch you right in the butthole,” I said.
You set all of it up. I gave you one damn job. And instead you rolled a rock over me and turned your back. I spent all that time drowning and surfacing in you, over and over and over, and all because in the end you could not bear to do the one thing I asked you to do. I wanted you to use me, you malign, double-crossing, corpse-obsessed bag of bones, you broken, used-up shithead! I wanted you to live and not die, you imaginary-girlfriend-having asshole! Fuck one flesh, one end, Harrow. I already gave my flesh to you, and I already gave you my end. I gave you my sword. I gave you myself. I did
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“She wants the D,” I said. And: “The D stands for dead.” And: “Sorry.”
Nav, if you persist in making jack-off motions when I am talking, I will show you what Harrow’s kidneys look like.”
“Reverse everything I just told you,” I said. “Let’s get married.”
why am I talking in meter?”
