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ancientannoyance:

A drawing of Cytherea from the Locked Tomb. Cytherea is drawn from the waist up against a dark green background, which is lit up only around her body in flashes of bright blue and murky green.She is wearing the torn shreds of a white nursing gown, which is floating tattered in the wind. Her skin is has a corpselike blue grey tint to it, contrasting with the dark brown of her hair, and the intense radioactive blue of her eyes. She is nonchalantly gripping the blade of a sword pointed towards her with one hand, her fingers bleeding from the sharpness of it. The blood is stylized in parallel lines that run down to form a red-outlined heart at the bottom of the painting. Around Cytherea is a square border of thick silvery white thorns, under which are hidden thinner green thorns, and beyond that there is another thin border of green squiggly lines. Along the bottom runs another thin rectangular border which consists of thick silvery white thorns curling over thin green leaves,over which the red heart is horizontally centered.ALT

“You’re a nice girl,” the Lyctor said. “I had a nice girl as a cavalier too … once. She died for me. What can you do?”

not to be a villain apologist on main but, i know the popular intepretation of “what can you do?” is Cytherea taunting Camilla, but given Tamsyn Muir’s propensity to write sentences with double meaning, I read it equally the other way, as a sad/resigned “what can you do”, Cytherea commiserating that she could have done nothing to stop Loveday from dying for her, just like Camilla could have done nothing to stop Palamedes from dying for her (and Gideon and Harrow)