Between Chapter 27 and Chapter 28

[we_bring_hell]

Observe Harrowhark Nonagesimus, flopped full-length on a sofa in Milliways, moaning into a cushion. She looks like a heap of coal-filthy laundry, like a bad black snake trying to wriggle into a crack in the fabric of reality and never return.

(When I release you from my service, Nav, you will know about it.)

She fucked up.

(It's just me. Go back to sleep.)

She fucked up so bad.

(Never work with children, Griddle. Their prefrontal cortexes aren't developed.)

She wants to die. For one golden moment she had done something right. Something worthy of what she's been given.

(Death first to vultures and scavengers.

It was good. You were good.)

She is a dullard. An imbecile. A fool. She had screamed herself hoarse upbraiding herself, then left Griddle with that viper Septimus to go do--what? Nothing useful. Nothing to bring back the flower of the Fourth. All she'd done is give Dulcinea Septimus more time to thieve the loyalty of her cavalier.

She wants to die, but she isn't allowed to die, not until she has redeemed the deaths of two hundred (and two!) children. Not until she's sold her poor mortgaged soul to the Emperor and the Corse of the Locked Tomb and renewed the Ninth. All of their hopes ride on her, and she is sinking under them, and the golden eyes of Gideon Nav are all their eyes; the eyes that can't believe that God and chance have entrusted their fate and their fidelity to this failure.

(Harrow, I hate you. I never stopped hating you. I will always hate you and you will always hate me.)

Comments

[lightamidchaos]

He steps through what he has by now come to think of as a strange sort of portal talisman, passing from Cold Pond Cave into the inn with ease.

Lan Wangji will never, never be able to take this for granted. Will never cease being grateful for the impossibility of this place, of Wei Ying's presence, of his own welcome found.

He glances around the room, but does not see Wei Ying, at least not yet. (He is, perhaps, a little earlier than he should be, he realizes. He will have to be careful; will need to practice patience, no matter how difficult it may be these days.) He does, however, see a familiar figure... and cannot fail to notice the evident signs of distress.

A frown creases his forehead, just above the ribbon, and he crosses the room.

"Reverend Daughter?"