IANTHE     I am my ambitions, Sextus. This is why I am a Lyctor, and why Harry, although a half-assed and self-defeating specimen, is a Lyctor, and why you are a little bag of bones. She and I both understand that the goal is always worth the cost. If it’s not, you ought to find a better goal.

IANTHE     Not my fault. It was Corona he was loyal to, even when it hurt him. God, he worshipped Coronabeth. Now, me, I never really hurt him. I was a figure of consistency. I ruled him through fear and poison and he relaxed into it like a warm bath.

DULCINEA     You two were my best friends, and that was real. I loved real, ugly, unfinished things. Gracelessly uncompleted things. There’s freedom, too, in not ever being completed. And now I’m not in the River and I won’t ever be again.