Hazel Nut

“He urged again, “Thoughts?” Gideon said, “Did you know that if you put the first three letters of your last name with the first three letters of your first name, you get ‘Sex Pal’?”
― Tamsyn Muir, Gideon the Ninth

“Maybe it's that I find the idea comforting...that thousands of years after you're gone...is when you really live. That your echo is louder than your voice is.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Gideon the Ninth

“Her adept said: "I'll keep it off you. Nav, show them what the Ninth House does."

Gideon lifted her sword. The construct worked itself free of its last confines of masonry and rotten wood and heaved before them, flexing itself like a butterfly.

"We do bones, motherfucker," she said.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Gideon the Ninth

“You apologise to me?” she bellowed. “You apologise to me now? You say that you’re sorry when I have spent my life destroying you? You are my whipping girl! I hurt you because it was a relief! I exist because my parents killed everyone and relegated you to a life of abject misery, and they would have killed you too and not given it a second’s goddamned thought! I have spent your life trying to make you regret that you weren’t dead, all because—I regretted I wasn’t! I ate you alive, and you have the temerity to tell me that you’re sorry?”
There were flecks of spittle on Harrowhark’s lips. She was retching for air.
“I have tried to dismantle you, Gideon Nav! The Ninth House poisoned you, we trod you underfoot—I took you to this killing field as my slave—you refuse to die, and you pity me! Strike me down. You’ve won. I’ve lived my whole wretched life at your mercy, yours alone, and God knows I deserve to die at your hand. You are my only friend. I am undone without you.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Gideon the Ninth