“I held my hand up in kinship, and her elbow moved, so I think she would have held her palm to me as well were she not manacled. When the hangdam yanked the block, she said
ah as she fell, and that
ah before her neck broke seemed the realest thing I'd ever heard said. Her voice as expressed in just that one syllable was perfect, not the deceiver's purr she'd used before the fight or the harpy's cry in the fray, but it was her essence; killer, lover, thief, daughter, all of it together with something of the divine as well. I loved her for that
ah.”
―
Christopher Buehlman,
The Blacktongue Thief