Foul Lady Fortune

Who did this to you?” Orion’s voice was violently quiet. “I’ll kill them.”

It felt easier somehow. To adopt a foreign tongue for difficult matters, to blame that foreignness for the conversation’s friction. The version of him who spoke Shanghainese with his father wouldn’t give him attitude like this. That version of him, who had trust and love and belief for a father he admired, seemed to exist only in the past.

“Stop waving your feminine wiles in front of him like that. He’s not strong enough.”

My money is your money

Trauma doesn’t have to lead to destruction. Trauma can be the guiding point into something better, something stronger

A city reborn is a city traumatized.

Orion refused to take most things seriously, and Silas took everything so seriously that they evened out. That was surely how equations worked, was it not

“The world runs on love, not suspicion.”

She knew now, of course. The same kind of person who had never loved her, who had been using her to get information on the Scarlet Gang.

What kind of person had the decency to say those words and not mean a single part of it? What kind of person would spend all that time winning her trust until they were lovers, only to pull the rug out from under her and chase power instead?