Beyond (The Founding of Valdemar, #1)

by Mercedes Lackey

“It’s magic. It has built-in fuckery.

Often, he brought Imager pictures of various cats, and added funny captions to them.

Cat memes are Valdemar canon. Wow.

Good bed, deep sleep, big breakfast, and one could outpace anything except a Night Person. Their ways were mysterious and full of cats.

“When a ruler gives up on empathy and sentiment, it is a sign of desperation. It means they’re paring away emotion in favor of efficiency and numbers and a twisted fantasy of a better life without the joys and burdens of caring about something outside of themselves. Contempt for kindness and generosity is the surest sign there is that someone has nothing else left to them but a horrible emptiness much worse than weakness.

“Do what you can, do everything that you can, do it to the best of your ability, and leave the rest to fate. Or the gods. Or random luck. Your choice,”