What a strange world it is, where prisoners are left their weapons and the written word is a mortal danger.
Megan Whalen TurnerIf you are feeling more yourself, there is a problem best addressed immediately," said the queen. "In my nightshirt?" The king wriggled, as ever, out of straightforward obedience. "Your attendants. I have spoken to them. You will speak to them as well." "Ah. They have seen me in my nightshirt." He looked down at his sleeve, embroidered with white flowers. "Not in your nightshirt, though.
Megan Whalen TurnerShe 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.
Megan Whalen TurnerOh, that," said the king with a shrug. "That isn't your honor, Costis. That's the public perception of your honor. It has nothing to do with anything important, except perhaps for manipulating fools who mistake honor for its bright, shiny trappings. You can always change the perceptions of fools.
Megan Whalen TurnerShe pulled the bedclothes up as far as they would go and suppressed a perverse wish to have her old nurse come to chase away the darkness, perverse because she didn't know if she wanted the shadows to be empty or not.
Megan Whalen TurnerIrene-" "Don't call me that." "You were the princess Irene the first time we met." "It means 'peace'," Attolia said. "What name could be more inappropriate?" "That I be named Helen?" Eddis suggested. The hard lines in Attolia's face eased, and she smiled. Eddis was a far cry from the woman whose beauty had started a war.
Megan Whalen Turner