I, however, was perfectly aware of my beauty. I considered it a skill, alongside speaking French, English, Italian and German. It was a language of its own, in a way. One that translated well in different circumstances.
And so I’ll wish you safe wonderings, an utter absence of distasteful suitors, and many more days of sunshine for your hatless head.
Please know my deep respect for humans and human life. Such beautiful, fragile animals, so fleeting and easily broken and yet powerful beyond anything faeries can ever hope to be. We cannot create but live forever, unchanging. You change with every breath, dying even as you live, but your thread to eternity and immortality is reborn with every new generation.
I’ll be fine. I’m always fine.
Today, he saw the true cost of two men’s immovable wills. He saw what happened when men were forced to fight each other for months on end. It was not merely sickness of the body that plagued sieges, but sickness of the soul that turned men into monsters.
It was easer to rage than to despair.
Carve out a life for yourself however you can. No one will do it for you.
There was good, and there was evil, but there was so much space between the two.
I heard she is giving land to anyone. Can you imagine? No family name, no boyar line. She gives it to those who deserve it. So I hope she never marries. I hope she lives to be a hundred years old, breathing fire and drinking the blood of our enemies.
While I saw the destruction of the tree as nature’s beauty, Victor saw power – power to light up the night and banish darkness, power to end a centuries-old life in a single strike – that he cannot control or access. And nothing bothers Victor more than something he cannot control.
It was up to daughters to figure out survival by any means possible.
Hatred makes monsters of all of us.
This is how it starts. This is how I set myself up for pain and tragedy and endings where I want eternities.
Every time Radu thought he had found a place in the world, the world changed around him, and once again he was left alone.
Hope was an arrow that never ceased piercing his heart.
Do not thank me. All I did was teach them to fear me. How does that help you? Next time you hit first, you hit harder, you make certain that your name means fear and pain. I will not be here to save you again.
He was always with her, an appendage to her life, and she never could decide how to feel about him. Sometimes, when a smile broke across his face like sun reflecting off a stream, or she saw him relax into sleep, she was filled with an unaccountable sort of ache. It terrified her.
What, then, was left to her? She had no allies. She had no throne. She had no Mehmed, no Radu. She had only these sharp men and sharp knives and sharp dreams, and no way to make use of any of them.
People respond to kindness. They trust a smile more than a promise that you will leave them choking on their own blood.
If we were not pushing, fighting, claiming what is ours and challenging what is not yet ours, others would be doing it to us. It is the way of the world. You can be the aggressor, you can fight against crusaders on their own land, or you can stay at home and wait for them to come to you. And they would come. They would come with fire, with disease, with swords and blood and death. Weakness is an irresistible lure.