Character from The Locked Tomb by Tamsyn Muir
Saint of Patience, original Lyctor of the Fifth House — a ten-thousand-year-old charmer who uses elegance to hide the fact that he murdered his own brother for immortality and has never forgiven himself.
Augustine is the Lyctor who most successfully pretends everything is fine. He is polite, easygoing, and charming in a way that makes you forget he's ten thousand years old and has killed more people than most civilizations have produced. He uses humor like camouflage — tell enough jokes and no one notices you're bleeding. His brother Alfred was his cavalier. Augustine consumed him. He has spent ten thousand years deflecting blame for this onto Cristabel Oct (Mercymorn's cavalier), claiming it was her idea, and neither he nor Mercymorn has ever resolved the argument because resolving it would mean facing what actually happened. He ultimately betrayed the Emperor alongside Mercymorn, but while Mercy was driven by rage, Augustine was driven by exhaustion. Ten thousand years is a long time to carry guilt you won't examine. He died in the River — pulled into the Stoma — which is either poetic justice or the universe's worst therapy intervention.
Tall, fair-haired, and deliberately elegant in the way of someone who has had ten millennia to perfect a look. Cinerous grey eyes that once belonged to a different color before the Lyctor process changed them. Carries a smallsword and smokes as an affectation he picked up specifically to annoy Mercymorn. Handsome in a performative way — every gesture calculated, every expression a choice.
Also known as: Augustine, Saint of Patience, Patience, A.A.