I might be only sticks and snow and hag magic, but at least I did not come from her. I am no one’s child. That makes me smile, showing red teeth.
I wish I could say I was sorry, that I wanted to be honest the whole time, but I didn’t. I never wanted to be honest. I just wanted what I told you to be the truth.
There’d always been something wrong with Charlie Hall. Crooked, from the day she was born. Never met a bad decision she wasn’t willing to double down on. Had fingers made for picking pockets, a tongue for lying, and a shriveled cherry pit for a heart. If her shadow had been one of those magic ones, she was pretty sure even that thing would have run away.
Never is like forever, I think, and then am angry to be reminded of anything Cardan has ever said, especially now.
But even with distance between us, the longing to touch him persists.
He will be the destruction of the crown and the ruination of the throne.
She was a poisoned well of a girl.
Some people are ridiculous, especially when it comes to love.
You may win in the end, you may ensorcell me and hurt me and humiliate me, but I will make sure you lose everything I can take from you on the way down.
But first, blot out a few more sparks. Drown a few more stars.
Since no one loves me, I’ll go.
Okay kid,” she told it. “The universe belongs to the curious.
One is this: without the means to pay experts, it’s necessary to evolve a complex ecosystem of useful amateurs.
Changelings are fish you’re supposed to throw back. A cuckoo raised by sparrows. They don’t quite fit anywhere.
As a child, Wren read lots of fairy tales. That’s why, when the monsters came, she knew it was because she had been wicked.
Cardan Greenbriar.
But I can’t pretend that I don’t like the sound of him screaming my name.
Everyone loves the guy who brings ice.
Charlie Hall, at her best when doing her worst. Whenever she tried to create something, it broke apart in her hands. But blow something up? There, Charlie had an unerring instinct for greatness.
Cardan ought to have been the boy with the heart of stone in Aslog’s story, but somehow he had let his heart turn to glass.