"I know exactly when. I was hiding in a takima bush in the Queen's Garden, watching the older son of the Baron Erondites tell Attolia that he loved h… - Megan Whalen Turner

"I know exactly when. I was hiding in a takima bush in the Queen's Garden, watching the older son of the Baron Erondites tell Attolia that he loved her. He was trying to propose a marriage and she thought he was talking about a poem he was writing. I was laughing like a very quiet fiend, trying not to make the branches around me shake, and then, between one heartbeat and the next, and to my complete surprise, it wasn't funny anymore." He rubbed his chest, as if a remembered pain. "I wanted to kill him. Once she was gone, I very nearly jumped out of the bush onto his head. Poor Dite."
Poor Eugenides, thought Sounis, to fall in love with a woman he had already made into an enemy.