Juanes Nieto

“The Aphelian grabs the front of my tunic, then seizes Buri's arm before she can react and uses it to slap me across the face. Hard. "There," she says. "Now you've hit him, and I've perceived you as a threat. Irritate me again and we'll revisit the argument." She steps away and gestures to the clearing with a devilish grin. "Carry on.”
― Jus Accardo, Omen of Ice

“Won’t you look at me, Camilla Hect?”
Camilla murmured something that Nona could not hear. The body said, “I died, and you carried me. I gambled, and you covered my bet. You kept the faith, and were the instrument of both my vengeance and my grace. And now I have fought through time, and the River, and Ianthe the First—fought and bested Ianthe the First, and I hope I never fight her ever again…Will you not look at me now, Cam, and know me?”
Camilla raised her chin. She looked at the dead face. She said quietly—“Yes Warden. I will always know you.”
Their foreheads touched. Camilla reached out with her slippery hand, and Palamedes clasped it with Ianthe Naberius’s cold, gloveless one. Because both of their hands were very messy, it made an embarrassing squelch, but neither of them appeared to notice or care. Nona had to look away.
She heard Palamedes say, in the voice of Ianthe Naberius—“Pyrrha, I can barely do anything. I’m only the hand in a sock puppet. I don’t think I could unpick a single ward, and I can’t do a damn thing for Cam’s bleeding—thank God nothing’s protruding.”
Cam said, without opening her eyes, “Don’t worry about me, Warden. I’ll walk it off.”
“Yes, thank you for your input,” said Palamedes pleasantly. “I’ve taken it under advisement and will add it to the next agenda.”
Camilla smiled that wonderful hot-metal smile that Nona loved as long as she had been alive.
“Jackass.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Nona the Ninth

“What do you think is sexy?” said Nona, in her normal voice.
Pyrrha seemed pleased to think about something different, and waited until the bubbles were getting really big before she took the spatula and slid it under a rising patty, flipping it over. Nona had come up by her elbow to watch.
“Do you want to know what I really think is sexy, or what I’d tell someone if they asked and I wanted to impress them?”
Nona was pleased Pyrrha understood.
“The first one.”
“Landmine people,” said Pyrrha, and when she saw Nona’s brows cross in confusion, she said: “Some people were put into the universe to rig it to explode, then walk away… I always fell for that.”
Nona thought she got it, but was unsure on a few points.
“But you can’t really tell that about someone when you first look at them.”
“Oh, you can,” said Pyrrha. “You haven’t looked for it.” She flipped over another pikelet, looked grave and intelligent for a moment, and then said: “I mean, also redheads. Love a redhead.”
Apart from Pyrrha, whose hair was a very deep dark russet, Honesty was the only redhead that Nona knew, and Honesty had big, pallid blue eyes that he could make float in different direction, when one wasn’t smushed. He also had skin like a horrible ghost’s. You could see all the veins in his eyelids. Nona said, “Okay. I don’t think redheads are sexy.”
“What? Hang on,” said Camilla, opening the door—no, Palamedes, opening the door, busy buttoning himself into Camilla’s jacket—“That’s a very interesting thing you just said, Nona. Let me write that down. Is that pikelets Pyrrha? You’re a legend.”
Nona wondered how Palamedes couldn’t see the hitch in Pyrrha’s shoulder, nor all the crinkles in her posture or her clothes that screamed PARK…PARK…PARK…, but took her moment.
“Palamedes, what do you think is sexy?”
“Those little outfits nurses wear,” said Palamedes promptly.
So Camilla had been lying, after all.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Nona the Ninth

“Sometimes it's hard to know if someone is insulting or just an American.”
― T. Kingfisher, What Moves the Dead