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September 23 - September 23, 2024
hand.
NO NOT MY MAN GORST
“Do you believe…” His voice sounded much like anyone else’s, whispering. “In redemption?” “I don’t fucking care.” “You’re young. Give it time.”
He’d been thinking about sending Glaward away. Some foreign posting. So Leo wouldn’t have to look at his stupid face. So he’d have Jurand to himself. He’d won everything, and still he was endlessly angry, endlessly jealous. But then he’d lost everything, too.
But she’d betrayed him, so it would’ve been a kind of surrender. The Young Lion might’ve suffered defeats, but he’d never surrendered. Never. Whatever it cost him.
little Leo, the biggest man in the Union.”
back.
Learning the wrong lessons. Being a dick and burning bridges won't get you as far as you think
two young gods
“If they hurt you I’ll be revenged on the bastards!” she snarled at him, wet eyes suddenly blazing. “I swear!” Orso smiled, then. It was an effort, considering everything, but he managed it. “I appreciate the thought more than you can know, but… if anything happens to me… I’d really rather you let it go.” He laid a hand gently on Hildi’s wet cheek. “Have a life instead. You deserve it.”
Flags never add to a man, d’you see, just stand in for something he’s missing.
You’re the North now, and the North kneels to no one. Besides, a man who’s moved by grovelling will never get enough grovelling for his taste. Let him once set his foot on your back and you’ll have a fucking bootprint ’twixt your shoulder blades till the day you’re buried.
“Ruthlessness is a quality much loved o’ the moon.”
He had acted for so many years, in the full and glaring view of the public, with an utter lack of dignity. Now, in private, he insisted on keeping hold of every shred.
but he yet possessed a full set of heroic nostrils.
LOL
The Master Maker forged mine,” said Caul Shivers, in that broken whisper of his. “It never gets blunt.” He made no effort to be threatening. The one advantage of a giant scar and a metal eye, perhaps, is that being threatening takes no effort whatsoever.
“Ah, why do I do this? Why?” Glokta gazed down at the squares board. “Because sometimes… to change the world… we must burn it down.
“Feel free to refuse. I will understand.” Vick’s old master leaned to murmur as he was wheeled past. “But we both know that ring will fit you perfectly.”
If she’d ever had a debt to Glokta it had only been in her own mind. One she chose to keep because she had nothing else. So she pronounced it long since paid. She tossed the ring spinning across the squares board, threw the bag over her shoulder and walked out without a backward glance. She flung the door shut and it banged from the frame, wobbled back open a crack. She didn’t even bother to close it. She thought of a wide sky over a far country. She smiled as she strode off into the night.
GOOD FOR HER
One should never let an opponent get comfortable in a conversation, after all, any more than in fencing, or business, or politics.
Savine would sooner have set herself on fire than apologise for saving Orso’s life.
Jurand was a caretaker. A fixer of problems, happiest when he was needed.
WELL, HE'S A PERFECT MATCH FOR LEO THE MAN-BABY THEN
you—”
Manipulating the person she knows can manipulate Leo now. Girlboss move
“Oh,” said Savine. “I suppose that would be another touch to me?” Jurand winced as he rubbed at the dent in his jacket. “Is there anything you do badly?” “Lose.” She gave her sweetest smile. “I swear I’m the worst loser in the world.”
“You don’t need to Highness me, Zuri, not when there’s no one else here.” Zuri arched one black brow. “My chicken, then? My pigeon? My dove?”
“I never doubted it.” She caught Savine’s eye, that brow creeping higher. “It only remains to be seen whether he can tickle your husband half so deftly.” “Zuri, you’re a devil.” “I daresay my scripture teacher would be deeply disappointed in me.” “You sound rather pleased at the prospect.”
Honestly, his approval was still a headier drug than pearl dust to her. No one knew her better than he did. No one understood her so well. Except Orso, perhaps, and he was gone.
“You freed us from Bayaz…” “Yes!” “So you could become Bayaz.”
The knob turned and the door swung open. A face appeared around the edge. An unremarkable face, with different-coloured eyes. “Knock, knock.” Yoru Sulfur stepped into the room. He was neatly presented, as he had always been at meetings of the Solar Society. That same polite manner, that same unassuming smile. The only difference that he was spattered from head to toe with blood.
“I warned my master you could not be trusted.” “What useful people can be?”
now.
HELL YEAH
Zuri twisted Sulfur’s head back, one hand hooking his top jaw, one hooking the bottom. She snarled as she began to drag them apart, his eyes bulging, his mouth gaping wider and wider until with a snapping crunch she ripped his face wide open, blood showering, tearing his bottom jaw from his head until it hung on strings of gristle.
HELL YEAH
“You… eat people.” “And you grind them to dust in your mills, and render them to meat on your battlefields, and let them rot when the sickness sweeps through your slums.”
“Doubts and regrets, they’re the cost of casting a shadow. The only folk without ’em are the dead.
If I choose to make o’ my heart a bleeding fucking sponge, then, by all the dead, Isern-i-Phail, that,” and she spat the word like a curse, “is how it will be!” There was a long silence, then. Just the gulls calling, and the sea rolling in, and the faint pulse of angry blood in Rikke’s head. The smile started as a crinkle at the corners of Isern’s eyes, then it spread to her mouth, to her cheeks, till it was right across her face. “Finally! I’d a worry you’d never get there.” Rikke closed her eyes. “So that was a bloody lesson, too, was it?” “Aye, a little bit.” Isern grinned as she offered
...more
open.
NOOOOO
Leo saw no harm in having something ornamental to look at as long as she remembered her place.
She’d always been a woman who liked to win. But if she intended to fight him now, she’d better get used to the taste of dirt.
“It is not yours, Leo. It belongs to our son, the king. We are merely the caretakers. The joint caretakers.”
“Let me be blunt. You will beat me in a foot race before you remove me from this chamber.”
But bear in mind, their oath isn’t to you, it’s to the king. And you are not king, Leo. You’re less king than I am.”
“You fucking did, you treacherous shit! And then you seized the throne against my wishes, and then you killed my brother, and now I’ll make you pay the fucking bill!”
You can call me treacherous. Call me ruthless. But ask who I learned it from.”
I ground to dust in my mills, and turned to meat on my battlefields, and let rot in my slums.
What Zuri said to her
“Maybe, after all… I’m the villain.” Leo glared at her from the other end of the table. “So. You’ll back down about Sipani?” “Oh, no. I won’t back down about anything.”
She took a pinch up the other nostril.
Girl, please
