As soon as the guards where gone, I lay down on my stone bench and dumped the king and his threats out of my head without ceremony. They were too unpleasant to worry over anyway.
Megan Whalen TurnerWill there be poppy juice in it?" Phresine shook her head. "Good. My wife and I agreed that only my wine was to be poisoned.
Megan Whalen TurnerHer queen danced like a flame in the wind, and the mercurial king like the weight at the center of the earth.
Megan Whalen TurnerYou have to believe him, because he's going to have your entire palace up in arms and your court in chaos and every member of it from the barons to the boot cleaners coming to you for his blood, and you are going to have to deal with it." Attolia smiled. "You make him sound like more trouble than he is worth. "No," said Eddis thoughtfully. "Never more than he is worth.
Megan Whalen TurnerNo," he said. "Relius was right and I was wrong. You are My Queen. Even though you cut my head from my shoulders, with my last breath as a noose tightens, to the last beat of my heart if I hang from the walls of the palace, you are My Queen. That I have failed you does not change my love for you or my loyalty.
Megan Whalen TurnerMuse of poetry, come to his aid, I thought. Could the man produce one more metaphor of husbandry? He seemed to be trying. "Green wood," I suggested, but even he sensed that there was something unfortunate about a metaphor for a king in which you dry out your royalty before you set fire to it.
Megan Whalen Turner