Historical fiction is not history. You're blending real events and actual historical personages with characters of your own creation.

She went to the window seat and sat there, sniffling, hating them all, and herself most of all. It was all her fault, everything bad that had happened.

The Red God takes what is his, lovely girl. And only death may pay for life. You saved me and the two I was with. You stole three deaths from the Red God. We have to give them back. Speak three names and the man will do the rest. Three lives I will give you - no more, no less, and we're done.

He drew the dagger and laid it on the table between them; a length of dragonbone and Valyrian steel, as sharp as the difference between right and wrong, between true and false, between life and death.

I have an instinctual distrust of conventional happy endings.

The sun will soon be setting, and corpses make poor company by night. These were dark and dangerous men, alive. I doubt that death will have improved them.

Every flight begins with a fall.