Ching-Chih

“We were castoffs and slaves, orphans and unwanteds and used-to-be princesses...and we were mighty.”
― Lesley Livingston, The Valiant

“There was a sort of innocence to him, I thought. I do not mean this as the poets mean it: a virtue to be broken by the story's end, or else upheld at great cost. Nor do I mean that he was foolish or guileless. I mean that he was made only of himself, without the dregs that clog the rest of us. He thought and felt and acted, and all these things made a straight line. No wonder his father had been so baffled by him. He would have always been looking for the hidden meaning, the knife in the dark. But Telemachus carried his blade in the open.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“Maybe honor wasn't always something won by a blade. I thought. And maybe it couldn't be so easily stripped away, even in servitude.”
― Lesley Livingston, The Valiant

“I'm so sorry, bright little thing."

"For what, my lord?:" I asked, my voice small and lost in the dim air.

His words caught in his throat as he answered. "For not making the world a place where you could choose to fight for yourself.”
― Lesley Livingston, The Valiant