Naaytaashreads’s Reviews > The Foxglove King > Status Update

"Bastian didn't answer. Instead, he placed the crown on his head. It crossed the bloodied line on his brow. 'Long live the Sainted King.'.

"Half a sun, arching up from the points of her crescent moon. She knew without looking that Bastian's palm would match, a moon sliced beneath his sun, their two scars fit into one symbol. Life and death, light and dark."

"A presence at her back, Gave. He didn't touch her, but his hand hovered over his dagger, and Bastian's arm still looped over her hips. The three of them standing close, drawn together again."

"Her road ended here, in the Citadel.Either dead from August's ritual, or kept in a gilded cage, a tool to aid in controlling a mad and dying King.Lore knew it.Gabe knew it. astien did, too.Of the three of them, he was the most likely to try to change the unchangeable, the one most predisposed to thinking he could shift the world to suit him.But even Bastien had to realise it was pointless this time.Lore was caught."

"So, it's been you from the beginning. You watching me since I came up from the catacombs, you're organizing the raid so i would show myself. You bringing me here and planting clues that would lead me to raising the army, all to make the pieces of your vision fall into place. Stringing August along, too, until he decided he wanted a war."

"I was told so by the god himself. Told that you were the Arceneaux to whom he'd bestow his power. Told that Gabriel Remaut and a child from the catacombs must stay close by you after your Consecration, and it would pave the way for Apollius's return."

"Because it didn't feel.. right, being with you. It felt dangerous. Something I should get away from while I had the strength to do it. It felt like a mistake, but one i'd made before. One i knew would end badly."

"She knew it like she knew the shape of the catacombs, like she knew her name and the crescent edges of the scar of her palm. no part of that world beneath the earth would remain closed to her."

"Gabe's forehead tipped against hers. Neither one of them said anything, just sitting like that for a moment,sharing the same breath and the knowledge that whatever had been about to happen wasn't going to happen anymore. Then he was gone, disappearing into the dark. Her door opened, his body blocking the silver of light, then closed again. Lore leaned back against the window and let the cold seep down to her bones."

"Gabe believed in the afterlife. Believed in the myriad hells, the Shinning Realm. When they'd spoken of it in the garden, it'd been all in abstracts, an intellectual exercise. But he believed she'd sent Milo to his eternal reward, only to rip him back out again. And that made her the kind of monster he'd sworn not to be."