It tickled her fancy to imagine Harrowhark falling asleep crying, like any lovelorn child. What a fool. What a destructive, romantic, ridiculous act.

“When she asks how I knew she was in the library, tell her Cam says she clinks when she walks.”

“How old are you, really, Harry?” “Eighteen, and my tolerance for Harry wears thin.” “Eighteen,” she said, in the tones of the jaded, fagged-out socialite. “I remember being eighteen.” “You are twenty-two.” “It’s a universe away from eighteen.”

“I like to think that she would like you. You’d make a hell of a daughter, Harrowhark. I sometimes indulge in the wish that you’d been mine.”

At a point in the slit she was carving through life, Harrowhark Nonagesimus woke to find herself lost in a dark wound.

He said coolly: “Because I’m the greatest necromancer of my generation.” The unconscious figure sacked across Gideon’s shoulder muttered, “Like hell you are.”

“I need you to hide my infirmity,” said Harrowhark. “You see, I am insane.”

Gideon promptly bit her. There was a simple joy in watching Harrow swear furiously and shake her hand and peel off the bitten glove, like in seeing sunlight or eating a good meal.

Ever the obsessive and secretive scholar, she had derived at great cost some forgotten way of preserving and puppeting the bodies.

The Reverend Daughter's sharp-angled, foxy chin was thrust out, and she still had a thick rime of blood circling each nostril, but with her burning black eyes she looked exalted as a bad bone saint.

“How old are you, really, Harry?” “Eighteen, and my tolerance for Harry wears thin.” “Eighteen,” she said, in the tones of the jaded, fagged-out socialite. “I remember being eighteen.” “You are twenty-two.” “It’s a universe away from eighteen.”

Holy shit. Perpetual bone. Harrow had actually cracked it.

She had enunciated clearly—no lisping—devotions of their own devising: The Tomb I will serve till the end of my days, and then see me buried in two hundred graves... which they'd thought sweetly whimsical, just right for a little girl.

“I am so sorry. You were party to a tragedy based on a misunderstanding.”

“Harrow says I’m a weenie over Dulcinea—” (“You are,” said Harrow, “a weenie over Dulcinea,”)

You said, “Please,” and you reached out again. A wave of dizziness rocked you. You pushed at the robe lying crooked at the slope of her shoulder; you pressed your hand low to her belly.

But the black-eyed infant collapsed on the altar chid her sharply in a clear voice, saying, What is this that thou wouldst do, Tridentarius? Touch her and our vow will come to nothing, and I will slay you where you stand.

“You should have killed your sister,” you said. “Your eyes don’t match your face.”

“This isn’t a picture you’re drawing, Harrow,” said Pent. “It’s a play you’re directing.”

THE REVEREND DAUGHTER Harrowhark Nonagesimus ought to have been the 311th Reverend Mother of her line. She was the eighty-seventh Nona of her House; she was the first Harrowhark.