Legacy of the Brightwash (Tainted Dominion, #1)

by Krystle Matar

The crowd pressed in close to the pilings, jostling against each other, collecting like a blood clot in an open wound.

She didn’t even know that he was her Regulation Officer now. Her file was technically his, but he hadn’t opened it yet. Hadn’t looked. It wasn’t how he’d hoped to come to know Stella Whiterock.

“Tinmen never take tea because tinmen don’t have souls. People who don’t take tea in another man’s home can only be men without souls. Yes, tea means very much to me.

Tea is the cornerstone of civilization, Mr. Blackwood, and I could never trust a man who doesn’t take it.”

He watched Jason diminish, every lost pound and every bruise gained chipping a piece of Tashué away. One day, he would know how to fix it, how to get Jason out.

I was tempted to hope I would see her again, but hope seems such a stupid thing in this world.”

“I promise, the food really is quite good,” Wolfe said. “And the wine, Captain, is excellent. As is the gin and the brandy and the whisky.” “Oh, well, if there’s going to be good whisky.”

man who made her heart beat so fast that she finally felt alive again.

💜

“Take off your jacket, then. Flour will stick to all that wet wool.”

😏

She wished for a moment she could give it back to him, this thing that she had taken, that she could fold his emotions back into his chest so he could feel that they had never been exposed at all.

Better to be lonely and feel the sharp edges of it, she thought, than to be empty and filled with nothing.

With those old angers dragged back to the surface, it was hard to push them all back into the crevices of his soul, but he had to.

She kept taking pieces from him, pieces that she didn’t think she was entitled to.

“I listen,” she said finally. “People give me their stories, and I listen.”

He was a dangerous man, with that beautiful laugh and that ugly tin badge.

Ishmael plucked another pair of glasses from a passing tray, trading one for Tashué’s empty glass. “This is the anise spirit I mentioned. The bitterness pairs well with rich people talking about how they spend and make money.”

“Proper etiquette is no joking matter, Mr. Blackwood!” Illea gasped, laying a hand on her chest and taking a deep breath.

Neither of them needed to mention how much emotion was in this one little timepiece, with both of their fathers laying their hands on it. Fathers that had been gone too long.

Again, that oh, the secret weapon of the Whiterock family, a tiny syllable that contained all the weight of their disappointment.

Duskan wore his fury like a shield, his whole body writhing with the energy of it.

We carry a bit of home with us, no matter where we go. It shapes us, changes how we see the rest of the world, doesn’t it? Nothing wrong with it.”

Stella knew enough about loss and grief to know that you never really recovered, so much as you learnt to go on living even though you were falling apart.

before he could say anything she was off in a flurry of bread crumbs and confidence, a woman so completely in control of her world that Stella wondered if she even knew what doubt felt like.

They just stop feeling anything at all.

oh noooo

He had managed to rope in Kazrani, Beckett and Duskan, sending them off with the photographer and the modified omnibus to transfer the prisoners to the Rift.

I feel that this is going to go poorly

They mustn’t be allowed to be human, lest we face the reality that we’re exploiting other humans for little conveniences like brights and trams.”

Rhodrishi sighed, long and slow. “My friend, would you like me to be honest, or would you like to continue living in self-delusion?”

“But it isn’t a birthmark, is it? It’s a tattoo.”

ohhhh

What world did he live in that women like Stella and his mother were reduced to such ugly words by men who saw them as tools to serve them and their needs?

There was something important about that tattoo,

Is it one of Keoh's children?

Her child,

oh dang

To promise anything more than ‘as soon as I can’ was a lie.

Would you have understood what that meant before you had seen the evidence of it?”

if this man dies, I'll be sad

The bad things shape us, Ceridwen. Like those marbles.

“Grief and loss, they’re like the fire that shapes us,” Tashué continued. “Turns us into something better.”

He held Ceridwen while she cried, her tears soaking into his shirt. It was worse than all the blood he’d spilt. The blood, at least, was his.

“What has you looking so greensick, then?”

I wonder if she's pregnant

this. Not my child.”

is it Tashue's?