justine ⊹ ࣪ ˖

“Once you dreamed you were killing a boy in some distant city, and you woke to find your sword in your hand, the blade cutting down toward your squire’s upturned face, his eyes like grave dirt. He did not flinch or scream. He simply sat beneath the arc of your sword as if God Himself bade him be still. You wrenched the sword aside so belatedly that a soft lock of his hair fell to the dirt. You called him a fool and a child and many worse names. “I could have killed you,” you said, and he had answered, obscurely, “You never do.”
― Alix E. Harrow, The Six Deaths of the Saint