The Familiar

- Нет. Никто не смотрит слишком пристально на женщину в лохмотьях.

• А стоило бы!— сказала Люция. — У кого в доме больше власти, чем у женщины, которая помешивает суп, печет хлеб, моет полы, наполняет грелку для ног горячими углями, раскладывает письма и нянчит детей?

He felt a sinking disappointment, not that she would be mocked, not even that Víctor would disavow her, but that he had thought better of her, of her wit, of her lively speech that galloped along like a skittish pony, hooves dancing, nothing like the hesitant creature he’d met in the widow’s courtyard, a peasant girl who was not at all what she seemed.

Maybe if she'd been born on a different day, or even at a different hour, without the prayers for a queen's soul echoing in her ears, she might have done just that. But she could be no one but herself.

You are not in danger of dying from hard work. You think you know hardship, but men have a gift for finding new ways to make women suffer.

“Fear men, Luzia,” he said. “Fear their ambition and the crimes theycommit in its service. But don’t fear magic or what you may do with it.”

"...Your ambition will destroy you, Luzia.”

“Maybe,” Luzia admitted. “But let it be my ambition and not my fear that seals my fate.”

Luzia could taste the pomegranate in her mouth, the flavor of her own ambition, her appetite for more. She eyed the golden curtains of the stage and knew she would prove Santángel right. She was done going hungry.

But not all empires are the same. The Dutch and the English will build markets for their goods, colonies for their taxes, new routes of trade. They will bleed the world for an age. Spain builds nothing <...>.

The king in his palace. The lion in his den. And the kitchen rat freed from the larder and dressed as a fine lady. But she didn’t feel like a rat anymore.