"The insides of your body turning to stuffing isn't so pleasant now, is it?" His words echoed through my head. The flames from the candles cast a dim light over one side of his face, the other masked in shadow.

"Going?" Vin asked, perking up. "But you just got in!" "That's the funny thing about arriving somewhere, Vin," he said with a wink. "Once you're there, the only thing you can really do is leave again."

The best liars are those who tell the truth most of the time.

“The Duchess, my wife sends her adoration and infinite regards to Your Brilliance. As for her condition, I regret to say that she is—deceased, if one may use such a term now. Her illness, as you might recall, was lengthy, despite her relative youth, and the disease progressed and culminated in a crisis just last week, so that her mortal flesh failed. And now she requires neither rest nor sustenance. She sits at her embroidery now, day and night.”

Memories are dangerous things. You turn them over and over, until you know every touch and corner, but still you’ll find an edge to cut you. I looked into my own darkness. I knew what it was to be trapped, and to watch ruination. Each day the memories weigh a little heavier. Each day they drag you down that bit further. You wind them around you, a single thread at a time, and you weave your own shroud, you build a cocoon, and in it madness grows. The lights pulsed beneath my fingers, ebbing and flowing to the beat of my voice. You sit here with your yesterdays queuing at your shoulder. You listen to their reproach and curse those that gave you life.