Then perhaps you don’t need it. I think the scar gives you character, even if it does mar those pretty tattoos. Would make for great tavern stories if you didn’t cover it.” Neferre laughed flatly and stuck her hands in her pockets. “There’s nothing great about getting mugged, Ziro.” Ziro laughed, her deep voice jiggling her second chin. “Oh, aye. But no one said you had to tell the truth now, did they?

Why does everything want to eat children?!”Neferre smiled. “Because you taste like candy. Stinky socks would mask your delicious scent from the aziza. We must get you stinky socks. So they do not eat you.”“That’s not much of a bedtime story! You really haven’t done this before!

Neferre swallowed hard. “The elder used to tell stories of dark places in dark times,” she said, picking the needle through with black nails, “when the winters were endless and the sun fell cold across the land. When beasts far worse than the crags prowled the shadows. And there were no humans. Only elvkarin and the night. We knew the bitter sting of winter’s breath and it never ended as it ends now. We called it Isaria on Evile. A Time of Darkness.

Helianthus snorted. “Olorun is like his mother: he will only change as the face of a rock changes. But . . . I think he missed you.

My child will bear those scars forever,” Tilv said angrily. “And if he isn’t a fool, perhaps your child will learn from them,” Neferre returned calmly.

Verne frowned. “Calm down. Don’t exert yourself in your condition.” Salen looked at Verne in amazement. “Don’t exert --! My dear woman, we are all about to die! I don’t think it damn well matters if I shit my pants at this point --

As if the president gives a crap about demons and what they go through just because her father’s got horns?” Morganith returned. “She never opens her coward mouth about the quiet oppression the demons -- your people -- face every single day --!” “Our people,” Hari calmly corrected. “No,” said Morganith at once. “Halflings have never been anyone’s people.

You must be a rich human,” went on Holonie. “You could have come here with bodyguards, dogs, something. But you came here alone. Very risky. Nearly insane. Completely stupid.”Elbryn laughed his flat, humorless laugh. “Thanks?

He was a tyrant who had enslaved and murdered the elves and betrayed his own people. [...] Emperor Qalduun had existed over a thousand years ago and had been forgotten by no one except for the humans, who liked to pretend none of it had even happened. It was hardly shocking that none of Elbryn’s human caretakers would have spoken to him about Qalduun. Humans were notorious for covering up history rather than learning from it.