§ As they had been all set to leave after my Investiture, the time of departure was literally immediately following the meeting. I asked Bruna to stay back as the others left, promising not to delay her for long. The blond warrior scratched the back of her head and grinned after the door closed. She’d done a good job sitting …

§ Lady Feraen of the Old Grove, Fairy Knight of the Forest and Field faction and proud granddaughter of the ancient satyr chieftain, Lâsin of the Old Grove, is a woman of supreme self-respect. Learning of her own unwitting service to demons through her contract with Lord Parna seemed like a fatal blow to her dignity at the time. She …

§ To minimize costs for the duchy and the travel expenses of the nobility, in consideration of the war effort, we held my investiture the day after the funeral. We had long since passed the proper interval after Mother’s death, after all. Frankly, I could write a long description of it, or I can just say that a Shinto wedding …

§ We stood together, Rod with his arm around my shoulders, while others, including Mireia, stood in a rank behind us. Mir wanted to be next to us to comfort us, but this was a public context where that would cause a scandal. But with her concubinage now official, nobody could object to her standing in the noble ranks, so …

§ It seems I cannot feel at ease with days that pass in a peaceful manner. A pattern where I rise, meet with my aides, review the military situation, have meals, and work my way predictably through all the other things, a daily routine of the sort to which the inheritor of a duchy ought to be the most accustomed, …

§ I’ve been sleeping more often since my marriage, for a very simple and almost insidious reason. I’ll snuggle with Mireia after she feeds me or, well, other things, and Rod tucks the two of us in before settling in himself. It’s warm. I sleep. I don’t need even vaguely as much sleep as a mortal, but once I doze …

§ Perhaps a small correction is in order. When Mireia said she would feed me, that was her plan for the grand finale, not the opening act. Anyway, Genette (who also hugged me first, upon seeing me, before recovering her aplomb and apologizing for her behavior) led me to my dressing room, where I baffled her when she wanted to …

§ After eighty four days in Sky Ocean, when Narses was preparing for the late sunset of the first week of  the Month of Summer Storms, less than three weeks after the summer solstice, and roughly six hours after the attack in which I disappeared, three formless [Blood Effigies] emerged from my body. Sirth and Lhan respectively controlled two, and …

§ The teahouse, which for many long days served as our command center, while I and my previous incarnations worked to guard the members of the Oto Expedition from the potential catastrophe I feared that my husband had sent them into, is technically a figment of Fan Li’s imagination. However, the imagination of a one-and-a-half-millennium-old cultivating scholar of Huajie is …

§ Grandmother made a spiraling descent on dragonfly wings, having entered through the hole in the ‘sky’, while I was taking a break after a training session. After reaching the bottom, she came skimming across the water toward us, her filmy raiment disappearing in order to match our lack of attire as she landed and settled onto the grass. Oh, …