This Crumbling Pageant Quotes

“a scrawny, ill-dressed man slamming a filthy girl against the rough wall of a building, one hand tearing at her skirt, pulling it higher as his other hand fondled his own rigid dandilolly.”
― Patricia Burroughs, This Crumbling Pageant

“You’d best pray it’s the Darkness that has driven you mad, boy, because if it’s not, you’ll pay for these bruises with some of your own!” He pinned the boy to the ground with one hand braced on a shoulder and continued, “I’m not going to hurt you. Just calm down and let’s see if we can relieve you.”

The boy relaxed, calming except for his heaving chest as he fought for air.

Robin’s mind raced through his options, coming up blank.

“Cat-mint…” the boy muttered. “Tincture of angelica. Blue chalcedony, jet, bronzite, amber—do you have any on you?”

“No,” Robin said, confused.

The boy moaned. “Trifolium, then. There’s bound to be trifolium…” The boy’s head fell back into the dirt.

“Trifolium? I don’t know…”

“Clover,” the boy ordered, scorn dripping from his voice. “I’m speaking of clover.”

Robin paced along the road looking for a clump of clover, unsure whether to laugh or snarl.

“Do you at least know your Greek sigils?” the boy muttered weakly. “The banishing sigil performed with clover…”

Greek, he thought resentfully rubbing his jaw. “I know sigils,” he said, amending silently, if I can remember the Greek ones from the schoolroom.

If he got the scamp past this spell of poisoning, he was going to thrash him. And where had he got into such Darkness in the first place?


Burroughs, Patricia. This Crumbling Pageant (The Fury Triad Book 1) (pp. 23-24). Story Spring Publishing, LLC. Kindle Edition.”
― Patricia Burroughs, This Crumbling Pageant

“But she would collapse into the fire before she would obey that man. “No.” Let the snivelling fools who followed this bastard see her for who and what she was, not someone to scorn but someone to fear. He would not win. She would die first. She reached deep, heart racing, and found rage. She didn’t care that Shadows clung to it, that it reeked of Darkness. Her scarred palm throbbed with it. She embraced it, erupted with it, felt herself shatter from within as she shrieked, “Bastard!”
― Patricia Burroughs, This Crumbling Pageant

“She shot up, the pain in her right shoulder tearing through her. “How dare you!”

His wand flicked out, aimed at her heart, though beyond the movement of that one agile hand, the rest of his body remained as still and dangerously relaxed as before. “Quite easily,” he purred.”
― Patricia Burroughs, This Crumbling Pageant