Between Two Fires

by Christopher Buehlman

The only thing he liked to hunt was boar, because a boar would turn and fight you until you drove the spear in deep enough. That was something Thomas had a gift for.

<3

“He called me his little moon.” “What?” “His little moon. That’s what he called me.”

why am i rereading this i'm gonna throw up

Mother, she wrote, and a smile broke so gently on her face that Thomas bit his tongue viciously to keep from weeping for his own.

:(

“I . . . I wanted to clean it for you.”

reread and :( ugh

“Get yourself fucked, and your shit-nosed girl of a squire. I don’t have to answer to you. Where have you fought? In a whorehouse brawl? For the right to plow your whore mother without paying?”

my man

Yes, this was Hell. And if all that was left for him to do was fight, he would fight to frighten Lucifer.

thank you to my man

A horrible shriek came from the field. The crowd went, “HO-ooooooooo,” the way a crowd will when something awful has happened to a man.

so unintentionaly funny ily Thomas

Some righteous men and women yet held faith, but they were scattered so far that none could see the other’s light, and it seemed the darkness had no end.

A dark-haired little boy just in pants stood bewildered near the blaze, saying, as if there had been some mistake, “We live here. We live here.”

screaming, crying, throwing up

Out of nowhere, she wanted the woman to hold her.

:(

“You’ll sleep in my workshop. Keep the windows closed and barred. If you use the slop jar, don’t open the windows to throw it out until morning. They don’t come every night, but it’s been nearly a week. They’re due.”

this is so scary fr

Thomas nodded, then stood up from the floor without the use of his hands, as a fit young squire might have; as if his anger made him youthful.

smash

“You don’t strike me as a sodomite.” “Oh, but heresy and blasphemy sit well, do they?”

“I see you,” it said to Delphine, though its stone eyes did not seem to see anything. She shuddered. “You didn’t help the baby,” it said, and walked backward into the night.

gah damn

He was in danger of losing his belief, if not his soul. Were there souls at all? Was there really a naked, invisible little version of himself hiding under his skin, so valuable to Heaven and Hell that each would send emissaries down to fight for it?

sheesh

If they tasted the blood mixed into their beer, they never said a word about it.

I know that's right

“I wouldn’t leave you,” a small voice said. The priest looked down and saw that Delphine had come from the barn. “If it was the boy,” she continued. “I wouldn’t leave.”

I'm going to throw up if they die

“Sounds like you’ve never met a baby. Many of them are awful. I knew one in Picardy who stole his father’s money and crawled down the road to the whorehouse. “ “It was you,” she said. “The only bad baby ever was you.”

Delphine you sassy bitch ily

How was she to believe man was anything special when he looked so much like any other animal in death? He was just a rained-on, ruined carcass, as if he had never kissed her, as if he had never danced.

This book was written to torture me i think

Why must you hurt her she’s so small

STOP

“He would hurt me if he could. You wouldn’t let him do that, would you? Hurt me?” “Not for all the world.” He could tell by the way her eyes turned up that she was smiling. “Not even for wine?” He smiled, too. “Not even for wine.”

I should put this down while they're all still alive

“She was tempted by something stronger than her. Adam was tempted by a weaker creature. Or so we are told. If Eve was his inferior, his sin was greater. You can’t have it both ways.”

feminist icon

She was dead weight. And yet he held her.

no words

“Our ship sank in the river. My daughter will die without warmth.”

yeah I'm gonna throw up

From that day forward, three taps of her ring on anything meant, Do you remember our wedding day? and three taps on his part meant, God, yes.

actually crying

On the third day, he and the girl would make for Avignon, pulling the little goat on a rope, trying to call the dogs to follow them; but the male would stay whimpering in his master’s house and the female would lie on his grave, wagging her tail at them until their forward motion eclipsed her behind a stand of goldenrod.

sobbing. why did I buy this book

For all his goodness, the comte was not gentle; he was of this world, and of the brutality of the world. This man, Matthieu Hanicotte, seemed to have been misplaced here.

yeah i'm suing the author

She blew into the dead man’s mouth a dozen more times, but his fingers never moved again, and, when she began to have the feeling she was troubling him, she went to a corner and sobbed until she washed the whites out of her eyes.

same

“I’ll be angry if you stand up.”

naw

“If you open that case, I’ll bite your fucking thumbs off.”

oh my GOD???

the boy had something about him of the dog who feared so much to be kicked that kicking it seemed obligatory.

damn

found no harm in him, but rather a long-buried goodness.

my man

Daughter witch page saint prophet angel what are you what are you You Delphine

crying

This is what i’m for i do this i drive it home i’m strong strong please

please spare my boy

Delphine screamed with hope and joy when she saw her Thomas cleave the wicked one’s head, So strong he’s so strong

HER THOMAS are you joking

A hand squeezed his as his life left him. He thought it was Matthieu’s. I’m sorry, Robert-of-the-bushes. I’m sorry.

god damnit

Not Hell. I mean me. Us. You? Her. Delphine.

jail

Those gray eyes. Those gray eyes through every part of him, loving what was strong and what was weak indifferently.

I absolutely cannot

And Parsnip, heehawing by the willow tree.

oh my god bro Parsnip

He was not a learned man, as her father had been, but goodness shone from him as from an unseen sun.

I'm never reading another book again