"Silence is a sound which has evaporated and disappeared in the wind and fragmented into echoes preserved in cosmic water jars. If we were to listen intently, we would hear the thud of the apple against a stone in God's garden, Abel's cry of fear when he first sees his own blood, the original moans of desire between a man and a woman who don't know what they are doing."
Sayfa 33 - archipelago books, journal, translated from the Arabic by Catherine Cobham
“How you’ve spoken to me doesn’t bother me. I’m not insecure enough to care about the opinions of little men.” Casteel’s face was inches from the wide-eyed wolven. “If that had been all, I would’ve overlooked it. If you had stopped after the first time you referenced her, I would’ve let you walk out of here with just your overinflated sense of self-worth. But then you insulted her. You made her flinch, and then you threatened her. I will not forget that.”
“I—” Whatever Landell was about to say ended in a gurgle as Casteel’s right arm thrust forward.
“And I will not be able to forgive you.” Casteel jerked his arm back, throwing something to the floor. It landed with a fleshy smack.
My lips slowly parted as I realized what the lumpy, red mass was. Oh, my gods. A heart. It was an actual heart.
Letting go of the wolven, Casteel stepped back, watching Landell slide down the wall, the wolven’s head lolling to the side. He turned to face the table, his right hand stained with blood and gore. “Does anyone else have anything they’d like to share?”
Aman aman nerelere geldik böyle :DKitabı okudu
And it was strange to know myself and be so certain when I’d spent so long not knowing myself—never really being allowed to discover who I was, what I might like or dislike, what I’d want or need. But I knew now.
I had known the moment I asked him to stay. I knew what the consequences could be. I knew what I was, and what was expected of me, and I knew I could no longer be that. It wasn’t what I wanted in life. It had never been my choice.
But this…this I wanted.
Hawke was who I wanted.
This was my choice.
I was reclaiming my life, and it had started long before him. When I demanded to be taught how to fight, and when I made Vikter include me when he went out to help the cursed. Those were significant steps, but there had been smaller ones along the way. In a way, they were even more important. I’d been changing, evolving just like the gift I was forbidden to wield but remained determined to use. It was in every adventure and risk I took. It was in my desire to experience what I’d been told was not for me.
That was why I’d initially stayed in the room at the Red Pearl with Hawke.
It was the way I’d met the Duke’s stare and smiled at him when I’d been unveiled.
It was when I’d spoke to Loren for the first time, and when I went out to the Rise. My evolution kept me quiet as the Duke delivered his lessons, and when I sliced Lord Mazeen’s arm and hand and head from his body, I’d been cutting through the chains I never chose to wear. I just hadn’t realized it then. There were so many little steps over the years and especially in recent weeks. I didn’t know when it had finally happened, but I knew one thing for certain.
Hawke wasn’t the catalyst.
He was the reward.
"A mother makes a child from her own blood and bones. They are attached in the first part of life, and although the connection lessens, it never goes away."
e-kitap olarak okuyorum.
It was written that king Aegon himself wept the first time his granddaughter was placed in his arms, and thereafter doted upon the child.
Sayfa 55Kitabı okuyor
The blood was old, like it usually is on the first day of my period, and the drops had coagulated into little sticky black lumps. It has always frightened me that I can’t stop the blood. It just drips and drips from me to a rhythm I can’t control, and now, too, every drip was wrapped in an echo from the porcelain, from the plasterboard, from the firm concrete walls. They whispered to me – *Jo* … *Jo* … *Jo* … *Jo* … – as if I was leaking into the room and dissolving, flowing from my own bloody crotch like black juice from a rotten apple core.
