#veretian

Where exactly did they get native speakers to teach the prince of Akielos how to speak it *And* how to understand it when it is spoken to him (they are not the same skill necessarily)? Did the king capture an entire Veretian village and keep them as prisoners on the castle grounds somewhere so the prince could speak with them daily?

-Captive Prince (by C. S. Pacat)

'As for the room, everywhere he looked his eyes were assaulted with ornamentation. The walls were overrun by decoration. The wooden doors were delicate as a screen and carved with a repeated design that included gaps in the wood; through them you could glimpse shadowy impressions of what lay on the other side. The windows were similarly screened. Even the floor tiles were particoloured and arranged in a geometric pattern. Everything gave the impression of patterns within patterns, the twisty creations of the Veretian mind.'

“Whether his beauty would survive adolescence no one would ever know, for Nicaise would not see fifteen now... “

- the regent makes him get one of his ears pierced in the year after Marlas when Laurent was most under his thumb to make him feel even weaker than he already did...it’s an easily concealable piercing, especially since he wouldn’t actually wear anything in it unless he was alone with his Uncle and even if someone did see it, the Regent could simply blame it on the whims of a willful, careless prince