You want to know why humanity’s never been involved in a serious interspecies conflict? Because it’s like going out to eat when you have a pantry ful… - Adam-Troy Castro

There had never been any violence in her life, up until those last few hours—and there seemed no reason beyond simple self-defense for her to feel the urgency she felt now.
But she did hunger for it. She wanted to feel something alive turn to something dead. She wanted to stand above it at the moment of its dying, and feel the satisfaction of knowing that she’d been the one who drove it from the world of things that live and breathe and feel into the world of things that merely rot.

I could only read the delay as a dramatic pause. Theatrics. Or diplomacy; wise men throughout history had already noticed that sometimes there wasn’t much of a difference between the two.

He’d played me very well. He’s sensed my misanthropy, and played up that aspect of his own personality. He’d even accused the Porrinyards of the same failing. But was that just the typical gamesmanship of a habitual manipulator, or the obfuscation of a sociopath?