flue

lodestone,

She’d laughed, and if he could have bottled the sound and gotten drunk on it every night, he would have. It terrified him.

There was no part of him that was not broken, that had not healed wrong, and there was no part of him that was not stronger for having been broken.

“The life you live, the hate you feel—it’s poison. I can drink it no longer.” Matthias locked the cell door and hurried down the passage toward Nina, toward something more.

“Some people see a magic trick and say, ‘Impossible!’ They clap their hands, turn over their money, and forget about it ten minutes later. Other people ask how it worked. They go home, get into bed, toss and turn, wondering how it was done. It takes them a good night’s sleep to forget all about it. And then there are the ones who stay awake,

stolid

She was being vague, but she wasn’t yet ready to speak the dream that had ignited in her heart—a crew of her own, a ship under her command, a crusade. It felt like something that was meant to be kept secret, a new seed that might grow to something extraordinary if it wasn’t forced to bloom too soon.

She clung to the wall, but it was purpose she grasped at long last, and that carried her upward.