I died knowing you’d hate me for dying, but Nonagesimus, you hating me always meant more than anyone else in this hot and stupid universe loving me.
[ID: Four digital paintings with dramatic lighting, with text on an orange background overlaid. 1. Gideon viewed from behind, her two-hander gleaming as she has it propped on her shoulder. Text reads, “Always your sword, my umbral sovereign.” 2. Gideon and Harrow side by side, surrounded by partially raised skeletons, Gideon’s sword at the ready. Text reads, “In life…” 3. Harrow, one eye gold and one black, blood dripping from her nose, trying to hold the two-hander. Gideon stands behind her, one hand on the handle and one on the blade to help her hold it. Text reads, “in death…” 4. Harrow, both eyes gold behind her shades, grinning as she reaches over her shoulder to grab the bone-encrusted sword. Text reads, “in anything beyond life or death that they’d want to throw at thee and me.” /end ID]
There was silence, except for Camilla’s ragged breathing and the lieutenant’s tiny, half-amazed gasps. Then Jeannemary said, “Hot dog.”
[id: a digital painting of a scene from Gideon the Ninth, depicting Camilla and Palamedes. Pal is a young white man with dark curly hair, gray eyes, dark gray robes, and round glasses. Cam is a young brown woman with shoulder length dark hair, she’s wearing a dark gray robe, and wielding a knife and a rapier. at the top of the drawing there’s a frame with Palamedes saying “Cam”, and at the bottom there’s one with Pal pushing his glasses up, and they’re shining like an anime character’s. he’s grinning and saying “Go loud.” /end id]
[image description: a digital illustration of characters from the locked tomb trilogy, standing against a dark reddish background. ianthe is on the left with her arms wrapped across her chest, looking with disgust over her shoulder at gideon-in-harrow standing next to her. gideon’s pointing up at ianthe confrontationally and saying, “you’re in her dm’s, i died for her. we are not the same.”]
Harrow was too amazed by her body’s expanding capacity for despair. It was as though her feeling doubled even as she looked at it, unfolding, like falling down an endless flight of stairs. She dug her hands into the mattress and she cried for Gideon Nav.
