Dying would have been so much easier.

That is ridiculous," she said. The king agreed. "Like falling in love with a landslide. Only you could fail to notice.

She thought of the hardness and the coldness she had cultivated over those years and wondered if they were the mask she wore or if the mask had become her self. If the longing inside her for kindness, for warmth, for compassion, was the last seed of hope for her, she didn't know how to nurture it or if it could live.

I can't leave her there all alone, surrounded by stone walls... She's too precious to give up.

Discretion prevented me from saying that I thought she was a fiend from the underworld and that mountain lions couldn't force me to enter her service.

Costis bowed stiffly. “I am here to make sure that you stay in bed, Your Majesty, because if this offends you and you order me summarily executed, it is no loss. Politically speaking.

What he brought out was a wooden gag they put in someone's mouth before doing something drastic, like cutting off a leg.