“It's pathetic,” she repeated, slightly thick with blood. “I turn up the volume. I put on a show. You feel bad. You make it so easy. I got more hot and bothered digging all night.”
Her most vivid memory of her mother was of her hands guiding Harrow’s over an inexpertly rendered portion of skull, her fingers encircling the fat baby bracelets of Harrow’s wrists, tightening this cuff to indicate correct technique.
She gave a rather brusque hand-wave to the geriatric fan club behind her and they scattered: tottering, kissing the floor and rattling both their prayer beads and their unlubricated knee joints, disappearing into the darkness and down the tier.
Behind you, the Kindly Prince was saying, in far more ominous tones than you had ever heard him use: “Six days. No sleep. She still manages a full skeleton commencement from diluted marrow. What else have you failed to see, Mercymorn—?”
Her eyes opened. A small, astonished smile creased her mouth. The smile transformed her face into an affliction of beauty that Gideon had heretofore managed to ignore.
Then everything changed, abruptly, forever. Harrowhark fell in love.
“Falling” was not the right term, precisely. It was a long process. She more correctly climbed down into love, picked its locks, opened its gates, and breached its inner chamber.
Nona whispered, “I’m sorry—I’m not Harrowhark.”
“Ay, and you’ve said that before,” said the old man. “Who are you this time, if not my Lady Harrowhark?”
You had been nearly eight weeks in the Mithraeum. The sword that you bathed in your own arterial blood was sheathed in bone and heavy on your back. You no longer knew what it was like not to be afraid.
She fiddled with long earrings of bone in front of the mirror and repainted her face twice. Gideon realised with no small amount of amusement and curiosity that Harrowhark was very frightened.
She reached down and hauled up one of the discarded blades. It was at least mildly hilarious to see Harrow have to heave with all the might of her, like, three muscles.