“I have a knife in my hand, slicing beef on the willowware plate, and I cut harder, faster, thinking it is your pink neck under my blade and I am cutting you into little pieces that I will bury in the meadow outside when there is no moon.”

“But now you can't find me or reach me or hurt me ever again and once I tell the words I am going to kick you off my porch and learn to breathe again.”

“I cut off your hand. I have been living with your grief and your rage and your pain ever since. I don't think-I don't think I had felt anything for a long time before that, but those emotions at least were familiar to me. Love I am not familiar with. I didn't recognize that feeling until I thought I had lost you in Ephrata. And when I thought I was losing you a second time, I realized I would give up anything to keep you-my lip service to other gods, but my pride, too, and my rage at all gods, everything for you.”

“At night I dream of swimming, my arms move smoothly through the water it is so easy, so calm.”

“No," he said. "Relius was right and I was wrong. You are My Queen. Even though you cut my head from my shoulders, with my last breath as a noose tightens, to the last beat of my heart if I hang from the walls of the palace, you are My Queen. That I have failed you does not change my love for you or my loyalty.”

“Sophos, you sleep with a knife under your pillow? I'm hurt.""I'm sorry," said Sounis, afraid that he had made contact with his wild swing."I was joking. Wake up the rest of the way, would you?""Gen, it's the middle of the night.""I know," said the king of Attolia.Sounis tried to rub the sleep out of his eyes. He was sitting up in his bed. The sky was still entirely dark, and he couldn't have been asleep for long. He suspected that he had just dropped off. The bare knife was still in his hand, he realized, and he rooted under his pillow for the sheath."Don't you trust my palace security?""Yes, of course," Sounis said, trying to think of some other reason besides mistrust to sleep with a knife. He heard Eugenides laugh."My queen and I sleep with a matched set under our pillows, as well as handguns in pockets on the bedposts. Don't be embarrassed.”

“Are you badly hurt?""Hideously," said the king, without sounding injured at all. "I am disemboweled. My insides may in an instant become my outsides as I stand here before you.”