The Virtu

I gave up on cussing - I'd run out of words filthy enough - and just started praying.

I catch a flash of red-gold beneath the surface of the water, and realize that there are koi in the pond, massive, serene, and I wonder: are they dreams of fish, or fish who dream?

It occurred to me that it said something very unpleasant about both of us that we saw concern and kindness as attacks.

Felix just sat there, not smirking exactly - or not so as you could call him on it - but clearly happy with how unhappy he'd managed to make all of us.

'You like jealousy. You like knowing people want you.' He wasn't talking about sex, and my heart slowed a little. 'Is it not natural to want to be liked?' 'That ain't what you want. It's like you got to have everybody's heart, and if they don't give it, you rip it out and watch it bleed.'

The rats we met the size of small dogs and they watched us go by like they'd figured out that what People were for was feeding rats.

Was you born this fucking dumb, Milly-Fox, or do you practice every Dixieme?

You put a guy who wants to control everything in the same room with a guy who’d rather wlak into a bonfire than listen when somebody tells him not to, and it’s your own damn fault if you’re surprised when things get ugly.

What you're asking me to do is monstrous." "So? Ain't we both monsters?

Titan Clocks were made with iron and gold and human bone; they did not break, and they did not fail.

He was big, taller than me and bulky, with dark red-brown hair queued back like a flashie, and light brown eyes that looked as clever and fake as glass.

You’re going to eat him alive and never even notice.

In a choice between committing an act of grievous heresy-possibly even an act of evil-and losing my brother, I had chosen to commit heresy. And no matter how much it sickened me, I knew I would make the same choice again.

It was an effort not to let my fingers knot together, but Malkar had taught me, via his own brutal and unscrupulous methods, to counterfeit a nobleman’s poise, and the old instincts were not lost.

The duke’s house was a three-story affair with gilded pillars and marble facing, and it was as ugly as a gator in a pink satin ball gown.

I knew that look, that very slight hitch in his eyebrow that said he knew I was going to do what I wanted anyway, and he wasn’t going to waste his breath on me. I did not care for that look, but it was better than another quarrel.

He met my eyes-only for a moment, but enough that I knew we saw each other, as we so rarely did, plainly.

His eyes were green and cold and brilliant with murder.

It rattled me. Not just the look or the question-although those were bad enough-but the realization that he’d simply taken a shortcut through the conversation I’d anticipated having and reached the finish line ahead of me. I’d known he was much smarter than he seemed, but I hadn’t appreciated before how quick he was, that his mind was not in any way hobbled by the scar that slowed and distorted his speech. It was so terribly easy to forget that.

He had been exercising the caution of the fox he resembled, who walked into nothing without checking first to see if it was a trap.

He smiled. Not one of the dazzlers he used to get his own way. Just a smile, a little one kind of crooked. And Kethe, it was like I’d never been made at him at all.

My nerves still raw from the confronation with Astyanax, I was burningly aware of Mildmay’s beauty, his bones, his grace, the walls and shadows in his eyes. Burningly aware that he was my brother and, more than that, he did not want me.

The future felt like a herd of buffalo stampeding straight at me, and all I wanted was to get the fuck out of the way.

How many times do you have to learn? Don’t underestimate him.

I don’t want to make waves, you see, and that means I had better know what’s the pond before I go jumping in.

He smiled at me over his shoulder, a little smile and kind of twisted, but it meant he was glad I was here, and it made me warm all the way to my fucking toes. Yeah, I’m an idiot, thanks for noticing.

It’s a strange fucking world, and mostly the joke’s on us.

There was a sound in my head, a song. But I heard it, not with my ears, nor even with my mind as I heard Gideon’s voice. I heard it with my blood, with my bones, with the magic that lay coiled within me like a nest of half-sleeping dragons. I heard it with the remnants of my madness that not even all the wisdom and care of the celebrants of the Gardens of Nephele had been able to eradicate, and it was through my madness that I recognized that mournful, broken little melody: the sound of the Virtu singing to itself.

It's like you got to have everybody's heart, and if they don't give it, you rip it out and watch it bleed.

There ain’t nothing worse than getting fired by somebody you hate, because it means they