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"Thanks"
"Do not mention it."
"How many of these things do you even carry?"
He lifted his chin. "Leave me some small mysteries."
She snorted.
"Actually, I buy a dozen any time we stop at a town large enough to have a dry goods store."
"I always lose them."
"I know."

NJEGOVO ZNAN JE NA ISTOM LEVELU KO DARCYEV ZNAN NAKON STA MU ELIZABETA KAZE DA VOLI SETAT 🤌✨️

The other room is the same size as this one; we could not fit two people on the floor unless we stacked them. The stables are full,Brenner is threatening to put a dagger in the eye of anyone who tries to get him off the bed and Learned Edmund is apparently afraid that if he sleeps on your floor your feminine exhalations will cause his genitals to wither and his bowels to turn to water. And yes, it is a direct quote.

"I thought that you were a knight."
It shouldn't have stung, but it still did. A little. "Only a simple soldier. I was infantry before the god called me."
"You act like a knight" muttered Grace, her downturned mouth turning down even further. Stephen raised his eyebrows. "Oh you know. Noble. Chivalrous." His chest swallowed. "Stubborn."

Great Wonderful.
First you grind on him like a wanton, then you swoon all over him, and now you're giving him a show... This is going marvelously. What's next, tripping an falling on his cock by accident?

sounds like a brilliant strategy to me 🫡

Well" said the bishop, as Stephen fell immediately into the honour guard position, two steps back and to her left. "I tell you to go talk to a girl and you foil an assasination attempt. I'm a little frightened to think what might happen if I told you to go get laid."
Stephen muttered something between his clenched teeth.
"Would the city survive, do you think?"
"Gnnrghh"
"That's gnnrghh your holiness, to you."
"Sorry"

"You're telling me that a beautiful woman jumped into your arms and began moaning in your ear, you rescued her from the enemy and you didnt even get her name?"
"I didn't say she was beautiful."
"All women are beautiful" said Ishtvan, dismissing him. "It is the job of their lovers to make them feel that way if they do no already."
"I am not her lover!"
"And you won't be if you continue to be so craven-hearted."

I laid myself down beside you and took your hand carefully in mine.I thought, let us lie here forever. Let us be buried as wild things are, by tooth and claw and worm. Let the grasses grow up through sockets of our eyes. Let them find us in seven years or seventy, and let their brows furrow because they cannot tell my bones from yours.
Everlasting, Yvanne called me. But nothing that lives lasts forever.

When I wore only my quilted wool, I laid myself down beside you and took your hand carefully in mine. I thought, let us lie here forever. Let us be buried as wild things are, by tooth and claw and worm. Let the grasses grow up through sockets of our eyes. Let them find us in seven years or seventy, over and over, and...

...and the children we orphaned on the battlefield, and our own children who were never born.
There was not enough red paint in the world to write their names on the wall, but I supposed it did not matter; their blood had been mixed into the mortar.

It took many tragadies to make a nation. I listed them in my head like the names of the dead the papers used to print: the False Kings and their followers, the heathens and the rebels, my mother who took a bullet in her back, my father who put another in his leg, the idiot boys who marched with me to war and went home in boxes, the children who packed our shells with powder and the children we orphaned on the battl-

He would stand and fight then, like Gilda. Like everyone else who could not run.
This, I thought, was the reason Vivian needed the book so badly. Because no throne is held easily, or for long. Because a nation is a story we tell about ourselves and stories change, if you let them. Because where there is power, someone will oppose it.

He had told her once that she was no hero - what a lie. The queen had tried for years to make a mere weapon of her,a blade that killed coldly and without hesitation.The scholar had tried for years to make a coward out of her, a woman who lived selfishly,without risk. Both of them had tried to cut the honour out of her and leave only what served them best, and both of them had failed.For here she was, so full of honor

I don't know that Id be everything a mother should."
He tilted his head at her. "I suppose I wouldnt know. I never had a mother either.But.. Im not sure youve ever been what you should be,love." She scoweld at him, and he smiled his crooked smile. "You were a woman who carried a sword,a saint who slept nuns.Now you're a knight without armor and a wife without a ring.No matter what,youre always-
"Bad at it?
"Yourself"

I buried my hands in your hair, wrapped them in the boyish extravagance of your curls, as I never had, as I had done many times, as I would do many more. I felt time unweaving between us, the beginnings and endings lost in reckless tangle, and I tightened my fists in your hair, holding fast to this one moment. You made a small and lovely sound, deep in your throat, and pressed your brow hard to mine.

It came to me suddenly, the remembering, like a spring storm, and took me to the ground. You were there with me, kneeling in the snow. Your hands were cradling my jaw, and you were saying my name over and over,in a kind of terror.
I felt myself smile,wide and loose; the way I had not smiled since I was a girl. "You came back for me."
Always" Your voice sounded more like the voice I remembered. Fractured,scarred over

If I serve anything, let it be that. If I die for anything, let it be you.

💔

Everything I had believed and fought for - crown and country,the flag and the church,even the past itself - had proved false. What remained were those trivial, nameless moments which would be swallowed up by the tide of history and forgotten; my father's hand on my hair when I was a boy, the brusque press of Sawbridge's lips on my cheek... your eyes on mine at the very end, full of faith, so certain I would come back

"In order to have a future worth fighting for,you must have a past worth remembering."
I took a long drag from the cigarette. "How many times?"
"Pardon?"
"How many times has this happened before? How many times has she died?" My calmenss was a porcelain shell over my skin, encasing me.
"Do you know, I've lost track" she said and I punched her as hard as I could, full in the face.

mrzin je tako je mrzin

I was dying, but I had died before, and would die again. We had told this story so many times, you and I, and we would tell it so many more, and it would always end here, like this - with my blood on your hands and your tears on my face.
Call it god or fate, bad lick or good; all I knew is that I would see you again, and it was enough.

come back for me, you have to come back for me /please/.

always.

💔

In a thousand years,they will sing your name in the streets.They will raise their children on stories of brave Sir Una Everlasting who fought for crown and country.You may not have lived as a hero, but, I swear, you will die as one." Your voice split. "Just do this last thing."
It had the cadance of a myth or a prayer l, mesmerising in its simplicity.Die, and be redeemed. Die, and be remembered. Die, and live forever

And this time when you looked at me, I knew you did not see the Una Everlasting you wrote about in your book; pure and true and beautiful. You saw me as I was - old and scarred and brutal. A monster that would turn on even a harmless villager.
You had seen the truth of me and yet you were still here, holding my hand... And I couldn't seem to pull away.

and then he caressed her her callused hand and gently kissed it!

"Will you write that the great Sir Una cries out in her sleep, like a babe?"
"No,I will write that she gave everything - her sight, her youth, even her sleep - for her country." You paused. "And that she is a lout and a wretch who doesn't know how to say thank you."
There was a long moment of quiet.
"Thank you." Your teeth flashed, crookedly, and I added "Keep to your own side of the fire."
i love these small changes

To charge into battle, with neither shield nor mount, against terrible odds... to know the odds and charge anyway" You shook your head.You settled the spectacled back on my face and your features came into sudden focus:the severe line between your brows, the faint flush over the bridge of your nose. "There is a word for that and it is not a coward."
"Traitor?"
"Madman."

she is so gentle with him I CANNOT DEAL WITH

You did not fight cleanly or prettily; it was nothing like a dance. It was an annihilation, brutal and inexorable. The only beauty was in the sheer fucking speed of it. You swung Valiance one handed, quick as cleaver, and if your enemies did not meet your blade they met the edge of your shield,and when the shield was ripped from your arm, they met your mailed fist. You were Una Everlasting, there was no surviving you

Why were you armored, the first time I saw you in the woods?"
"So they would know me when they found me. I suppose even there, at the end of reason, I did not want to be forgotten."
There was a metallic ringing in my ears, like bullet casings on stone. "Pardon?"
"I could see no other way out. I could not bear to serve her any longer, and I could not bear to let her die. I loved her too well even then,even still.

"You are leaving me here?"
Your brows crimped, bemused. "Yes."
"You can't slay a dragon alone!"
"Everything I have done, I have done alone" You said it without emotion, as a statement of fact. "I thought you had read all the stories."
"But what if.. Just let me come with you.Please."
Your expression moved from bafflement to some harsh, taut emotion that made the muscles of your jaw roll. "You make a poor coward, boy"

"They should fear me, boy. And so should you."
You began to draw your hand away from mine, but I caught and held it instead. You looked up sharply, eyes dark as silt.
"Well, I don't."
Your lips parted and I saw again the phantom smile, berries bursting between sharp white teeth. I had never heard you laugh, but I knew then it would be low and rough, and wild.
💘

And I am her drawn blade.It was I who beheaded the False Kings,one by one, though they cried mercy.I who set the crown on her brow,with blood still crusted around jewels.I who rode at the front,who struck first and last, who drew every border in red.Do you know what they call me, in the north?" Your lip curled,I could not tell if the contempt was directed at them or yourself. "The Knight of Worms. Bc I feed them well

"Yvanne dresses me in fine gowns sometimes, for holy days and feasts.The first time I tripped over my own hem and whole court laughed and laughed.I am not sure which I prefer:to be taken for something I am not or to fail at being what I am."
A weird shock went through me,as if I'd caught the glimpse of myself in a mirror I hadnt known was there. "I would not laugh at you"

(i would prefer you however you chose to be)

"All my life men like you have followed me. Hounding me, lapping up the blood and begging for more. You have turned all my graves into glory, all my carnage into pretty songs they sing at court."