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October 20 - December 15, 2024
Nikeya sank up to her collarbone, all her dark hair fanning around her. Against her will, Dumai imagined winding her fingers through
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It was not a gentle kiss. Then again, Regny of Askrdal had only softened once that he recalled, the first time they had slept together, when neither of them had known what they were doing. She had been tender with him that night, and let him be tender to her in return.
‘Let this serve as a reminder that I fear nothing. Not blood, not war, not a fucking plague – and not sullen boys who don’t know how to love themselves.’
The assistant in question was tall and slim, high of cheek, with skin of a cool light brown and thick hair that fell in black waves to their shoulders. ‘Good day, Master Glenn,’ they said.
‘I make you this promise. One day, when you give your throne to your own daughter, when your mother and I have white hair and wrinkles, we shall all live in Hróth together. Every winter, we will watch the sky lights, and every summer, we will dance and laugh under the midnight sun.’
‘What?’ Sabran said, eyeing him over her shoulder. ‘What is it?’ ‘I never thought, when I was young and foolish, that you could grow more beautiful.’ His gaze pierced her.
I wish I had some certainty that this was not a dream. A dream is no less true than any other thing.
They never cried for mercy. Nor did they try to fight or flee. Instead, with their last breaths of life, the king and queen reached for each other. Wulf saw Bardholt move in front of Sabran, as if he had even a faint hope of saving her – saw the stark flash of his face, her long hair streaming in the wind – before the fire devoured them both.
‘Once a woman eats of a siden tree, she is for evermore a lamp, her blood a rich oil where others’ is water,’ she said. ‘The oil is strong. We even pass it to our children
‘Prince Therico is your age,’ Lady Brangain told her, ‘and very kind, according to Queen Rozaria. You met him once in Kárkaro, though I believe His Highness was rather shy of you.’ ‘Theo,’ Glorian said. It could have been worse. ‘Yes, I remember. He had a smoky kitten that followed him everywhere.’
‘your pain is not my pain, but I know its shape. I am sorry for it.’
we can try to stop the fire from rising any more. No child of earth could ever stop it. Only fallen night can stop it.
that brooch?’ Nikeya often wore it, close to her heart. It was shaped like a mulberry fruit with delicate gold leaves. Each berry was a drop of blood amber, such a deep red it was almost black.
‘That’s the second time you’ve enquired about my trinkets, Princess. I’ve heard people only start to notice such trifling details when they fall in love.’
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Part of me wishes the call had come when I was younger, with fewer aches, but I am also glad that we knew peace, for a time. That we lived in the Priory when it was a dreamers’ garden, and not just a fortress.’
The homeless and lost prayed to Nayimathun. She was beloved of tricksters and thieves, orphans and travellers.
His stomach gave a soft wintle.
‘You have seen better than anyone what happens when we neglect the earth.’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘The wyrms. What do you expect, when we abandoned the trees, when we stopped the harvest rites to praise just one man and his lie?’
‘There will be other women. Of all the people you could love, do not choose the one who is using you. You deserve more than that.’
‘Prince Guma will know me for an adulteress,’ Glorian said, ‘but I already know him for a heathen. He will have to accept the arrangement.’
The first time she had seen the lights, she had known that she could fall in love – not with a person, but a place.
Had she been free to choose, she would not have lain with anyone; she knew she never would again, after she got with child – but with a friend, she could find comfort in the closeness.
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‘What if she’s just a story?’ ‘The Nameless One was a story, Princess,’ Nikeya said, her face almost swallowed by her hood. ‘We will all be stories one day, and I’d want someone to believe we existed. Wouldn’t you?’
How you haunt me still, as I hold my half of our pact – this quickened stone that I possess, and that possesses me. It does not rest, nor let me rest, and yet I must protect it. It holds the fire at bay, but at what cost does it exist?
It seemed impossible that politics should go on in a time like this.
Glorian stood an inch past six feet,
Look past all the features a person cannot help, Queen Sabran had told Glorian once. Look at what they choose to put upon themselves.
‘Our gods have butterfly spirits to serve them.
Karlsten died because he saw danger in difference. He saw it in those women; he saw it in their dragon. Some people need to call others evil, so they can seem pure and righteous in comparison, or to purge contempt they hold in secret for themselves. Karlsten gave in to that. In the end, it swallowed him.’
‘I have not lost the game. I simply withdraw from it.’
Without her, I am having to learn new ways to live. I imagine you have these moments, too, when you trip on the spaces Kanifa filled.’
‘I love that you’ve never mentioned my beauty. I was taught to wield it without mercy,’ she said. ‘It is the first thing people see. It is what they remember.’ She glanced down, arms crossed over herself. ‘Beauty requires no talent.’
‘It was unthinkably cruel of Galian, to build a legacy upon the wombs of his descendants.’
‘I do hope you enjoyed your visit to Hróth. How sad that your daughter will not have the same freedom,’ he said. ‘My faith accepts her as she is. Yours demands that she be ploughed and sown.’
As she spoke, she tasted salt. Her father had always told her not to trouble him with tears; to use them only to further the cause – but her father was dead, and she had survived, and now she could weep for all of her losses.
