Extraits

“Sometimes, if you want to change a man's mind, you have to change the mind of the man next to him first.”

Because you’re a jumped-up barbarian goatfoot who abducted the Queen of Attolia and forced her to accept you as a husband and you have no right to be king, was Costis’s thought. Aloud, he said, “I don’t know, Your Majesty.”

It was a kiss between a man and his wife, and when it was over, the king closed his eyes and rested his forehead against the hollow of the queen’s shoulder, like a man seeking respite, like a man reaching home at the end of the day.

"...if Attolia could look like a queen, then Eugenides was like a god revealed...".

“Tell me you won’t cut out my lying tongue, tell me you won’t blind me, you won’t drive red-hot wires into my ears.”

After one moment of gripped immobility, the queen bent to kiss the king lightly on one closed eyelid, then on the other. She said, “I love your eyes.” She kissed him on either cheek, near the small lobe of his ear. “I love your ears, and I love”—she paused as she kissed him gently on the lips—“every single one of your ridiculous lies.”

“Don’t hang Teleus. But I don’t see how you can hang Costis if you won’t hang his superior officer.”

The queen turned back to face him.

“I could hang you,” she said.

Eugenides looked up at her. “You missed your chance for that,” he said.

The queen lifted a hand to briefly cover her eyes. “It is remarkable how you cloud my otherwise clear vision,” she said. “What is it you propose?”

“I propose that you let me trade him to Teleus. His life in return for Teleus’s good behavior.”

“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.”