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

by V.E. Schwab

Och ans, is farr, ins ol’ach, regh narr. There was no easy way to translate Veskan. It was the kind of language where every word could mean a dozen things, depending on their order and their context. It’s why he’d never managed more than a frail grasp on a handful of phrases. But this one he’d held on to. This one Alucard understood. A head gets lost, but a heart knows home.

Alucard stood there, imagining a life that was not, and had never been, and would never be.

Vasry fell in love the way other people fell down after too much wine,

For years, if he felt so much as a chill, he could conjure flame into his hands, or warm the air against his skin, the gesture as natural as breathing. Effortless. Simple. But nothing was simple anymore.

He let out a ragged sob, and bowed his head against the wood. He told himself he would grow accustomed to the pain. That its edges would eventually wear smooth. That at some point, the pain would fade—it had to fade. It was a wound, and all wounds healed. Skin knitted and scarred, and yet, every time this wound felt fresh. It was not a tear in his flesh. Something at the very heart of him had splintered, frayed, and he was beginning to suspect—to fear—that it would never heal. Never get easier. Never hurt less. If it were a ruined limb he would have cut it off, but there was no faulty limb. The ruin was everywhere. In his darkest moments, when he could not see a life without magic, or a future without pain, he thought, I cannot live like this. But he had to. This pain may be his own, but his life was not. Never would be.

Ooof. This hit me so hard and so early on in the book. I imagine it's the current state of my own emotions, but I grieved with Kell here. Magic was kell and now all that he was as come apart at the seams. Who is Kell without his magic.

And so he dragged his broken spirit forward, felt it shred again with every step, waited for the moment when his magic failed entirely, knowing it would be a mercy when it did. But for now, it was still there. Frayed, and torn, and waiting to be called.

He fought the urge to scream, and failed, the sound tearing free as he collapsed, his burning cheek against the icy patch of floor, and sobbed in pain, and anger, and grief. Who was he without magic? What was he worth?

“Always the keeper,” she mused with a sigh. “Never the kept.” “Believe it or not,” he said, “I am capable of having a good time.” She laughed, a buoyant sound that carried down the dock. “Capable, perhaps. Willing? Never.”

Anger bloomed inside him. He wanted to tell her it was different, that her eye was gone, and his magic was still there. A limb he felt but couldn’t use. A weapon he was forced to hold but couldn’t wield. He wanted to lash out at her. To scream. Instead he knelt and picked up his sword, and said, “Again.”

Delilah Bard was a force of nature. The world hadn’t simply opened for her. It had been cleaved, parted like skin beneath her knife. She was incredible.

“Has anyone told you,” he said, “that you’re gorgeous when you fight?” The words knocked her off-balance, like a boot catching on uneven ground. She stumbled, for just a second, and in that second, he swung. Her dagger came up at the last moment, but it was close, beautifully close, the two blades shivering against her throat. For once, Lila scowled. For once, Kell smiled.

Lila looked up at Kell, a grin spreading across her face. She had so many different smiles. Some happy and some cruel and some positively wicked, ones full of humor and ones full of hate, and he was still learning how to read them all. But this one he knew, not because it was common, but because it was rare. It was pride.

“You let me take that sword,” she snapped, shaking the sting from her palm. “Pain is a quick teacher,” he said,

He was clearly still in pain, and trying to hide it, but he couldn’t. Not from her. 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.

The pain was his, and so she let him have it.

Once upon a time, the thought would have been enough to send her heart lurching in a seasick way, her pulse hitting that old familiar drum, telling her to run, run, run. As if it were a snaring trap, a snake of chain around her legs. 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.

Untold masses who felt the darkness at their door and simply let it in. “Do not hate them for living,” Alucard had said. But Rhy did. Because in the end, they were cowards and they were rewarded for it. They were weak in the face of evil, and they lived.

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

Words had two kinds of power—the first in their meaning, the second in how they were said.

sometimes a thing didn’t need to be said to be heard, loud and clear, in someone’s posture, their expression, their gaze.

“We will each love him,” she said, “in our own way. I will give him what you cannot. And you will give him what I cannot. And together, we shall be a better kind of family.”

Morning had broken like an egg over the city, a yellow light that looked warmer than it felt as it touched the rooftops and glinted on store windows.

“Don’t be cross,” he’d said with a laugh. “It’s only a name.” But he was wrong. A name was like a strand of hair or a hangnail—something people shed too easily, no concern for where it went.

Names had value. And her father taught her never to give a thing away for less than it was worth. Especially something you couldn’t buy back.

Home. The word rose up like bile. He forced it down. This room belonged to a different Kell, the one whose coat no longer fit. The one who had sat at a gilded table downstairs, trying to teach Rhy magic, the one for whom it came as easily as air. And standing there, amid the memories, he flinched, because of how badly he wanted to be that Kell again. To have that life back. But it was gone. He had become someone else. By necessity, not choice. And yet, this place called him back. Wrapped its arms around him in a strange embrace, and made promises it couldn’t keep.

“I’ll catch you,” said Kell without so much as a pause. Rhy’s laughter died away. “I know.”

Oh, all the feels! Rhy and Kell are the picture of brotherly perfection. Complicated but full of love and laughter and shared grief. This scene truly made me smile!

“We are borrowed things,” said the priest. “Our bodies decay, and our essence—well, magic is the stream that waters all things. It lends itself to us in life, and in death calls it back, and so the stream appears to rise and fall, but it never loses a single drop.” “But what of our minds?” pressed Rhy. “Our memories? What of us?” “We are a moment, Your Majesty. And moments pass.”

Patience was a word for ordinary souls. She was Antari.

“My father taught me many things,” said Berras Emery, “but this one most. If a man does not know how to bow, you show him how to kneel.”

“I won’t do it again,” she said, but it was a lie, and they both knew it. When you had a power, not using it was like trying to hold your breath underwater. Sooner or later, something made you come up for air.

“It’s not the pain that frightens you. It’s what you are. And what you’re not. A priest removes their robes, and they are still a priest. But what is an Antari without their magic?”

“I mean, I fix things,” explained Tes. “I make them better. And I’m good at it. And yes, I can see magic. And yes, I can change it. And yes, I know that is a strange and valuable gift, but it doesn’t make me a thing instead of a person. I’m not a piece of magic to be put away, and taken out, whenever you have use, and I’m not going to be put in a cage or buried in the bowels of the ship.”