All the Hidden Paths (The Tithenai Chronicles Book 2)

by Foz Meadows

Cae wished, briefly and vehemently, for the assassin to burst in through the door so he’d have the excuse to fight someone.

had just enough time to register Markel’s horrified expression

lol

“I have big soft eyes?” “You know godsdamn well you do,”

I love them so much

“Bold of you to assume he’s ever been wrong.”

Sapphic

litai,

If Laecia had bullied and insisted, would I have submitted? And if so, what difference would there have been, really, between her actions and Killic’s?

“Forgive me. I’m a soft touch when it comes to cats—of which the estate has plenty—and in the yasa’s absence, we’ve rather gotten used to indulging them.” Thei touched the calico lightly between her ears. “This is Spoons.” “Spoons?” I asked, failing to keep the note of incredulity from my voice.

what if he loved me still, my fears since Etho unfounded? Moons knew, it would hardly be the first time I’d assumed the worst and been wrong where Cae was concerned.

“That would be Son of Spoons,” Ru Merit said dryly. “Ah,” said Cae, in slightly strangled tones. “Of course. Naturally.”

I’d understood myself as a kind of slowly unfolding tragedy.

queer yearning

So much this

I am not a tragedy.

“because the problem, as ever, is me,

Ok I am officially tired of this woe is me they need to seriously talk it out

I will not foist on an innocent child a burden I fear to lift myself.

“I don’t know what to do with you in these moments, Vel,” he said, voice rough. “I truly don’t.”

“You pull away, draw close, step back. You make me hope. You dizzy me,”

I kept hurting him, over and over, until even my kindness cut.

“What do you want me to say?” he asked, his hands above my face.

“We don’t know how to be happy, let alone how to do what’s best for ourselves.”

We are not tragedies.

“Grief is a complex thing,” she said softly, “and mourning many-hued.”

She pulled out a knife and, smiling, slashed my throat.

WTF?!?!?!?????!!!?!!!

Caethari was besotted with his prickly mess of a husband,

“Just let me do the talking, okay?” Markel shot me a glare that would’ve skewered a lesser man.

“We called it coming over the mountain, and no small number of townsfolk met their spouses that way.

But when someone else took charge of me, it melted away, and in that moment, it didn’t matter that General Naza didn’t like or trust me, or that I shouldn’t trust him; I just wanted not to have to think.

“Huh,” he said, and gave me a small, experimental shake, as if I were a ragdoll whose stuffing was all at one end. I moaned again, louder than before, my mouth hanging stupidly open, and the expression became a mocking, wicked smile.

How the hell had he gone into sub space so fast

“Are you always this easy?”

At the word kiensa, I moaned around his fingers. Like many Tithenai words, it had no clear Ralian counterpart; it was a diminutive endearment used primarily for pets and children, though between adults and especially among litai in Qi-Xihan, Nevan had said, the connotations were … particular.

my brain became an overtipped hourglass, full of nothing but falling sand.

he’d given me rules, and in my soft-sand state, the rules were what mattered.

“Not General. Not for this.” There was a note in his voice I was too far gone to interpret, though part of me still noticed it. “Think. If I call you kiensa, what do you call me?”

an archaic honorific used towards those of higher rank which now persisted only in its borrowed bedroom context. “Yaren,” I whispered.

the soft sand of my thoughts froze into ice, because this was when it ended;

recalling the gentle press of the general’s fingers against my lips as he hand-fed me titbits from his own plate.

You’ll be of use to me, then? the general had asked, thumb grazing across my mouth.

THE PLOT THICKENS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Cae tried his best, but he wasn’t good at keeping track of people with whom he didn’t routinely associate, and so he remained stumped.

“He was lonely,” Markel signed again, “but he would’ve rather been lonely forever than have me stay out of obligation.

Sharpen your tongue any further, and your sword will fall blunt.”

“Maybe the alcohol warmed you up.”

Did u drug him?!???!??!?

“You’re pathetic, you know that? Both of you. You deserve each other.”

and he realised with a terrible bolt of clarity that if he didn’t do something quickly,

Omg does the uncle want to be heir

over the missing dagger.

They’re gonna frame them from a murder probably arisens

missing jade-handled dagger.

Omg I knew it

Historically,

I’m so frustrated that they don’t have allies

Yasai Qiqa.

Yasai General Asrien Nevan

“All hail the idiot patient,” she said, the sarcasm undercut with a note of guilt-inducing professional worry. “Master of poor decisions and unnecessary risks. You nearly put your heart in failure, do you understand that?”

Ralia is cruel enough to men like us without being cruel to each other.

“He’s a familiar sort of stupid, that’s all,” he signed. “Like you at eighteen, but with better hair.”