Happy endings are a luxury of fiction

Better to know the quick pain of truth than the ongoing pain of a long-held false hope.

Nodding, Cery strode to the door and stepped through. Though the burly guards eyes him suspiciously, Cery smiled back. Never make enemies of someone's lackeys, his father had taught him. Better still, make them like you a lot.

Cery: So, Hem, tell me why I shouldn't see how many holes I need to make before you start leaking money?

It was impossible to imagine the aloof, dignified, powerful High Lord living as, of all things, a slave.

It is said, in Imardin, that the wind has a soul, and that it wails through the narrow streets because it is grieved by what it finds there.

How am I going to make friends with these people if all I can think of is how easy it would be to rob them?