The Fragile Threads of Power (Threads of Power, #1)

by V.E. Schwab

For the ones who still believe in magic

“Are you a girl or a beast?” “Whichever one I need to be,”

Once broken, soon repaired.

“Spells are like bodies,” she explained. “They go stiff, and break down, either from wear or neglect. Reset a bone wrong, and you might have a limp. Put a spell back in the wrong way, and the whole thing might splinter, or shatter, or worse.”

The merchant’s son feasted on those stories, supped on the details, gorged himself on the mystery, the magic, and the danger. He read them until the ink had faded and the spines cracked, and the paper was foxed at the edges from being thumbed, or from being shoved into pockets hastily when his father came around to the docks to check his work.

The Hand, she’d said, would take the weakness in the world and make it right. “The Hand holds the weight that balances the scale,” she said, stroking his bare skin. “The Hand holds the blade that carves the path of change.”

Some people cannot see the need for change until it’s done.

The Hand are nothing but a petty nuisance.” “So are moths,” he said. “Until they eat your finest coat.”

A head gets lost, but a heart knows home.

“Discretion isn’t the same as ignorance,”

“For warmth,” he said, and they both smiled at the words, the memory drawn like thread between them, between now and that first night when she had done the same to him, and claimed it was for luck. She kissed him again, deeper, hands sliding beneath his coat. Kell leaned in. He loved her. It scared him, but frankly, so did Lila. She always had.

Delilah Bard wasn’t a soft bed on a summer morning. She was a blade in the dark, dazzling, and dangerous, and sharp.

“Not every blade belongs to you,” he said. “It does if I can take it.”

To Lila, Kell had always been a pane of glass tilted toward her just so, so that where others saw only colors and streaks, she saw the truth of it. Of him.

As if people were just anchors, dead weight designed to hold you fast, drag you down. Caring could drown you, if you let it. But it could also help you float.

he wore it, still, to spite her. To say that in his mind they were still linked, that they would always be, that she was one of only two he loved so much, that he would let himself be bound to them like this.

It was the only kind of power that was both element and spell. Chaos and order.

‘I know how to lead men to war. How can I lead them to peace?’

“We all don clothes that do not fit, and hope we will grow into them. Or at least, grow used to them.”

He had a smile that could charm a shadow into the light. She had a glare that could send it back.

“Love and loss,” he murmured. “Are like a ship and the sea,”

“There is nowhere you go,” said the Antari to her prince, “that I cannot follow.”

Never doubt your importance or your power.