tbh ive been thinking and like, john is a piece of shit but i’m not sure he’s specifically cruel for having others research lyctorhood, despite him already having done it perfectly from since before they were ressurected
like he demonstrates no theoretical or academic understanding of necromancy, wholesale. he just Does Things. idk i can def imagine his power being so vast that he has no Understanding. thinking abt this.
hmmmm thinking abt what if the “queen” ianthe was thinking about was harrow. bc. she, now both princess and prince of ida, was like “someday i’ll marry that girl”
“The low emergency lights of the Mithraeum highlighted the sharp angle of Ianthe’s jaw and the hollow of her throat right where it joined the collar bones. Her pallid hair was streaked with gore of a color that could have never have come from a human being and her First House pearlescent robe was soaked in grime.
Gideon realized quite suddenly that Ianthe was beautiful.”
ok so hear me out: you know how when you really admire/value a specific skill, that means that whenever someone is really good at that skill, they seem kinda sexy? even when they are horrible? yeah.
This fic takes place after gideon and ianthe meet in HtN (when gideon is in Harrow’s body) and before they actually get to ianthe’s room.
reading gtn is thinking cytherea is a villian and reading htn is realizing she was right about everything: lyctorhood is a curse, don’t let Them (necromancers, God, the imperial deathcult) hurt you and use you and chew you up, fuck the people who designed your suffering and then used it to control your life. love that for her.
i have no coherent thoughts about nona honestly at this point i have no idea what is going on i am just absorbing information as it comes i have no theories i am just rotating the book in my mind like a blorbo
im thinking about. palamades considering a career as an amateur hardcore pornography writer, to hustle some extra spending money for the family….. but being banned from doing so by camilla because “cam’s body is a temple”. god i am thinking about it. thinking about how he got so bored in the River Bubble he read that one book (A Necromancer’s Marrige Season) a million times and wrote his own sequel……… god i am just. my entire mental image of palamades is shifting on its axis he is a randy KING that sequel was probably wall to wall fucking. i need to sit down.
ok im convinced now that nona is in harrow’s body. evidence: lyctoral healing, long black hair that grows too fast (throwback to ianthe’s petty revenge), and her name – cam and pal always called harrow “nonagesimus”. makes sense they’d see harrow’s body and call her that, before realizing that isnt correct and needing a different name for the nameless eldritch creature in her body.
camilla my love……. she survived the massacre at canaan house…. survived getting the shit kicked and electro-shocked out of her for months as a prisoner of war of BOE…. then she survived a spaceship roadtrip adventure with the MOST dysfunctional childhood not-friends to not-lovers in the universe….. she revived her Special Boy, ascended to lyctorhood, and is now playing babysitter to a nameless eldritch creature AND preventing her Special Boy from associating their good name with birthday cake erotica……….. i can’t blame her at this point for needing to be held back from Murder by the ghost of a saint.