How very interesting.

He tilts his hand towards the ghostly scene playing out before them—when he lifts it, it's clearer...that he is clearer than a person would be, that the unusual and unpredictable strength of his appearance is only a variant upon that same phenomenon. And yet.

“Under the imperial rule of my late uncle, the eyes of the law did not differentiate between forms of magic or its practise. These Circles fascinate me, you understand; a tower of witches would be an opportunity for a merry bonfire, and little else. They would burn sin from the world, allow no remaining stain. Our firstborn was condemned by the throne before she was yet in the cradle, for my crimes, but our second child—she will rule the empire I laid at her mother's feet. We have,” with great irony, “decriminalized curiosity.”

(The cruelty is not in his words, but that he speaks. The delicate, deliberate pull at the strings with which Petrana has tied shut her book of history; that she not be allowed to live as anything but his heart outside of his body, even here.)

“Lamorre burned women and smothered their children for the crime of hope, so we burned Lamorre and rebuilt it on bricks of all those promises whispered in the dark.”