A Strange and Stubborn Endurance (The Tithenai Chronicles #1)

by Foz Meadows

inimical

panoply

sinecure,

poleaxed

rictus.

obeisance

reticent

contention

importune

ablutions,

“Slowly, but yes,” I grunted. “I’m sorry to inconvenience you—” “You’re not an inconvenience, Velasin. You’re my husband.” “Many Ralian women claim that the one is synonymous with the other.” Caethari snorted. “That’s because many Ralian women are married to Ralian men.”

sycophant.”

primogeniture

I felt like I was unravelling, the skein of myself spooling out and out, until there was nothing left.

Boneless, I buried my face in Caethari’s neck and clung to him, thinking dimly, What else are husbands for, if not this?

maudlin

Caethari deserved better than to be a bad decision,

magnanimously.

not least because it made me wonder why it took excelling at something masculine for me to be impressed by female competence.

If women were meant to be valued for their feminine skills, then why were the skills themselves devalued?

politic

coterie

cogent

manfully

perfunctorily

in gaining the freedom to live openly with a man, Velasin had lost all freedom to choose his own partner, rendering it pointless.

Teasing him with the promise of something I didn’t dare offer would be unspeakably cruel to both of us, and so I just stood there, trembling with misery.

“Stolen me? As well to say a caged bird can be stolen by the sky.”

unstudied,

fossicked

churlish

abnegation,

benediction,

We tangled our legs, and I tasted the salt that gleamed along his collarbone, heart rabbiting as we drifted in that bliss which is cousin to sleep, but sweeter far.

assignations

provably

So shy of having my greatest indiscretion discovered that I seldom dared indulge in simpler ones.”

inviolate

It felt like family.