I am having a sudden resurgence of "Kamet and Costis and Relius and Teleus are everything" feelings.
Centered atm on "his heart is unlikely to remain in his work"/Irene sparing Costis the burden of sacrificing the man he loves and "you don't understand, captain. I am pardoning him"/Eugenides doing the same for Teleus.
and both Costis and Teleus accepting the idea that they might have to sacrifice themselves for their own failures, and Costis balking at the idea of sacrificing anyone else--Kamet, Eugenides, Teleus himself--while Teleus has nothing except his code of honor, and nothing he won't sacrifice to uphold it... and over the course of KoA and RotT specifically he is challenged, he's forced to bend his code, and how Relius's failure/potential torture and death is more of a struggle to him than the loss of his own life. (...the moment in the dungeons is the Akedah. Abraham willing to sacrifice Isaac until he's stopped. holy shiiiiiiit.)
and how really in KoA and RotT we see him face the loss of Costis, the loss of Relius multiple times over, and open up to Pheris, and... I've run out of coherent words. but, like, the hard, unfeeling, unyielding captain of early KoA compared to the man who cries with Pheris and can't bear dancing. he gets softer, he takes losses worse, he believes in love more and that's what hurts him.
god we need more Teleus POV/backstory. what a fascinating web MWT has managed to weave around a character who is secondary/tertiary for most of the series.
