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

“If I was really, really lucky, Felix might throw a fireball at me, and I'd get out of the rest of this freakshow.”

“Isolfr," Frithulf said, "you weigh a hundred stone.""Do I? Sorry," and he tried to straighten, but nothing was working.Frithulf swore and said,"Kari, I think I'm going to need you to get his feet."Are they running away? Isolfr wanted to ask.”

“He fell away into the column before Isolfr could blink the thought of thanking him into his bleary mind, and Isolfr looked up at Frithulf in supplication. “What was that about?” “Stay pretty,” Frithulf advised, through a mouthful of meat. Isolfr would have kicked him if he hadn’t been out of reach on the horse.”

“Sacred bleeding fuck,” I said, because, I mean its one thing to know your crazy hocus brother sees ghosts, and a whole different thing when you find out they’re telling him bedtime stories.”

“The obligation d'âme meant that his only allegiance was to Felix, making them a separate kingdom of two, with Felix as king and Mildmay as ministers, army, and populace all combined in one. A stormy little kingdom, I thought, with periodic flare-ups of civil war and a magnificently unstable government. And I was glad I wasn’t a citizen of it.”

“You know how sometimes you can be going along and do something or say something, and suddenly you *know* yourself? I mean, it's like you're looking at somebody else, and it's just so fucking clear you want to hit something.”