Aquiles

“This sadness is not an empty church and not an empty house. It is the whole empty world and I am in it and it is in me.”
― Anne de Marcken, It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over

“Gideon looked down at her necromancer. She had the heavy-lidded expression of someone who was concentrating in the knowledge that once they stopped concentrating, they would fall abruptly asleep. Harrow had gone unconscious once before: Gideon knew that the second time she let Harrow go under, there would probably not be any awakening. Harrow reached up - her hand was trembling - and tapped Gideon on the cheek.
'Nav,' she said, 'have you really forgiven me?'
Confirmed. They were all going to eat it.
'Of course I have, you bozo.'
'I don't deserve it.'
'Maybe not,' said Gideon, 'but that doesn't stop me forgiving you. Harrow - '
'Yes?'
'You know I don't give a damn about the Locked Tomb, right? You know I only care about you,' she said in a brokenhearted rush. She didn't know what she was trying to say, only that she had to say it now. With a bad, juddering noise, a tentacle had started to pound their splintering shelter again: WHAM. 'I'm no good at this duty thing. I'm just me. I can't do this without you.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Gideon the Ninth

“As I dithered, Pyrrha sandblasted me with the calm, "Your mother would've picked the bullet. "
"Yes, well, jail for Mother, " I said.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Harrow the Ninth

“O corse of the Locked Tomb, she prayed silently to herself, the cold death to anyone who looks at me in pity; the heat death to anyone who looks to me in amusement; the quick death to anyone who looks at me in fear.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Harrow the Ninth