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Will you tell me your name?"
"I do not remember my name. Now go inside"
Softly, Anne said "In the story, they say that Gralon Meur was a good king who loved his people. But they never knew if he found his wife in the Lost Lands."
The old man let out a long, slow breath. "Just this single moment" he said after a pause. "It is all I found of her..But it is enough.Every dawn I see her, and I am content"

💔

Then he crossed the room slowly and knelt before her.Their eyes met.There was a question in his.Then he looked down at the hem of her skirt, which was torn, and her slippers,which were mere rags now, with her feet bruised beneath.He traced her instep with a single finger. "Has anyone ever gone questing in such shoes, I wonder?"
"Only fools."
Very gently, he levered one slipper off, then the other, and paused "May I?"

"They will enjoy it, a harmless spectacle. And they will only be amused if you weep."
"As though I would." Her smile was almost convincing. "Truly, all this is for the best."
"Anne."
She leaned forward. "I am not beaten and I shall not break" she told him, though her eyes were afraid, her voice not quite steady. "And neither shall you."

oh anne of brittany, the woman you are 💘

"I am so afraid."
His hand closed around the back of her neck, beneath her hair. "I will not let anything happen to you."
It was a promise he could not be sure of keeping. Even if this between them was love, the thing poets described, it could not stop armies or time or fate or the capricuous will of God. And yet... and yet, she let herself be comforted by it.

the angst is killin me

Anne's knees gave way, her dress drenched in silver blood and the world wavering like water in her hazy vision, a wild mingling of daylight and starlight and winter shadows, as though all the days and nights of the world were happening at once and she had just been granted the eyes to see them.
Louis was still holding her up; she was smearing him with sea-drake's blood.
"The world is not as I thought."
💘

Her oratory was one of the few places where she could be alone, and now she regretted the ghost of an old trust that had gained him admittance. Her loneliness, which had been hidden even to herself, whispered now that she was tired of scheming and lying and waiting, that he knelt just near enough for her to feel the warmth of his body in that cold room.

it is cold.
will you come upstairs and drink wine in garderobe?

I would like to keep you from danger because your father's ghost would smite me from the grave if I let anything happen to you"
She glanced back. A mistake. The shared memory of a lost time lurked in his eyes.
"Anything happen to his daughter?Such as being married to his greatest enemy?"
"That cannot be helped."

i am sorry anne.
her name, his eyes on her;persistent aching memory.
YOU WILL NOT USE MY NAME AGAIN.

They wont panic if they think I'm not afraid of it. I am the virtous duchess."
Still the uncanny water gushed. Kestrel half-reared and Anne's head knocked against Orleans' jaw. She brushed his hair out her face. "Maybe you should be afraid of it"
"So help me, I will jump off and walk."
To her surprise he laughed. "Rage at me by all means, Highness. Better than sweet words with hidden thorns."

why is he married?!!

Demoiselle" he said to Isabeau of Brittany.He made her an elegant bow.
Years ago that would have made her giggle.But today,with dignity,she said "You have fallen in with our enemies, haven't you? I thought you loved Father. And us."
He would've savaged any impertinent courtier who had spoken thus, but when he opened his mouth to answer, the words caught in his throat.

nadan se da ce orleans dobit iskupljenje!

"The Lost Lands followed us." Elesbed spoke like a girl whose people live nearer raw truth of their land than any duchess in a castle ever could. In that moment, her childish voice conveyed not impudance, but lost wisdom.
"What does that mean?" demanded Isabeu.
"The edge of the Lost Lands is like the edge of the sea, my gram said. It ebbs and flows. But I never knew what she meant... I've never seen the sea."

"That yellow haired creature Polhaim is half in love with you" murmured Henri. "Didnt you see his face?"
"It is easy to be in love with someone you do not know, whom you must rescue from her enemies." She stared sideways at Henri,who looked affronted.
"Just as you like, go on and break hearts.When I have to kill the fellow who's finally broken yours, I shall congratulate him before I run him through
"Dont be dramatic

"My oath has never been broken" said the old lady haughtily.
Anne hesitated. She was angry, but she also recognised this ferocity. She possesed it too. The fierceness of a woman protecting something precious. "Will you swear on the Cross?"
The lady laughed. "I will swear on the shadows and the world's memory. I swear to keep your secrets."

ZAKUNIT ĆU SE NA SJENE I SJEĆANJE SVITA 💖

"Never fear," the old abbess told her and grinned unexpectedely. "While you sleep under my roof, the korriganed dance in the lightning; they do not come in out of a wild night."

ardenica pise vileeee 👀💖

“I’m sorry,” Euan said shakily. “I didn’t mean—”
“I could have stopped you.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I wanted to test my own strength,” the wizard answered slowly. “And because that was the tale that found its way out of the chest into your hands. Like water, tales find their own paths; they go where they are needed. Perhaps I need to remember."

“That witch — Brume. Does she really eat people?”
Unciel’s face smoothed; he gazed back, unblinking, at something beyond pain. “Brume,” he murmured. “Never underestimate the power of a tale. What you put aside as fantasy in one land can kill you in the next. As far as I know, she eats anything. Like death, she is always hungry and too much is never enough. Like love.”

"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