Only out of his spilled blood can a great ruler rise.
Neither loyalty nor love should be compelled.
Being High King, Cardan isn’t supposed to kneel to anyone, so Vivienne lifts Oak. With a laugh, my brother places a new crown on Cardan’s head to the delight of the crowd.
I said that if I couldn’t be better than my enemies, then I would become worse. Much, much worse.
It’s absurd, sometimes, the thought that she loves him. He’s grateful, of course, but it feels as though it’s just another of the ridiculous, absurd, dangerous things she does. She wants to fight monsters, and she wants him for a lover, the same boy she fantasized about murdering. She likes nothing easy or safe or sure.
What is a king without a crown? That’s a riddle, but one to which we all know the answer: no king at all.
At least no one is privy to my thoughts. Stupid as they are, they remain my own.
I smile when I’m nervous.
Fight your fight,” she tells me. “Let someone else worry about theirs.
I always supposed I would be delicious,” I hear him say, although I note that he does not take any of the meat for himself.
I bet Cardan has never even tried pizza.
Jude here made me her prisoner,” he says, and I have to fight down the urge to step heavily on his foot. “She ties very tight knots.
Wicked girl. Yet you let your sister take the brunt of my ire. That wasn’t very nice, was it?
I know he has a consort he favors, though she is of low rank.
A sharp tongue is no match for a sharp tooth.
She says that if this were a movie, someone would find a poem about cursed snakes and it would give us the clue we needed.
I think of Cardan’s words in the brugh, before he destroyed the crown: neither loyalty nor love should be compelled.
I wish I could punch him in his smug face and show him how undeterred I am by his exile.
He asks me nothing more, only matches his steps to mine.
Talk to me,” I say. “Tell me another fairy tale. Tell me something.