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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Chloe Gong
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October 14 - October 18, 2023
Of late, he had to admit that feeling was roaring back at full height. Suddenly he was twelve years old again, looking at the vastness of his life ahead and doubting he could make any order out of it.
“I promise—with my whole heart and soul—that he’s usually smarter,”
“Both of you just described the very definition of being afraid of something. Got it. We’re avoiding everyone.”
“So,” Alisa said as she and Orion started to walk west. “Do you want to hear all the juicy parts of the story that Rosalind skimmed over?” Orion grinned. “Oh, do I.”
“I had to catch up with myself first.” She’d had to remember who she was. Lug herself out from the sinkhole of her mistake, walk through the dark for miles and miles. Truth be told, she wasn’t even entirely sure she was out of the dark yet. But her feet were moving, and she could only hope it was in the right direction.
He felt her occupying immense space, the sound of her scoff and the color of her lips, the smell of her hair and the cadence of her voice. He couldn’t form the words that described how she existed in his head, but the feeling would balloon in his chest at any invocation—a soft feeling, a sweet feeling, less like sugar and more like springtime’s first warm breeze.
“Is this a car for ants?” “First of all, we are working on a budget,” Celia said. “Second of all, Hong Liwen, you should be so lucky that your brother even taught me how to drive. No more complaints before I send us off a cliff. Ready?”
“Children,” Celia interrupted, “if we are finished flirting with each other, may we discuss the small change in plans?” Alisa giggled. Rosalind knitted her brows together, feeling rather unjustly accused. “I was not flirting—” “I was.”
are finished flirting with each other, may we discuss the small change in plans?” Alisa giggled. Rosalind knitted her brows together, feeling rather unjustly accused. “I was not flirting—” “I was.” Orion adjusted in his seat again, trying not to whack his head into the ceiling.
Rosalind reached toward her shoulder, touching Orion’s hand with the lightest contact, so faint that it might have been imagined, so hesitant that it could have been easily left unacknowledged. Orion laced his fingers through hers firmly.
If Silas had been parched and starving, this sight alone would have been enough to satiate him. Let him lose everything else in the world, and he wouldn’t mind. Let the world think of him as discardable or frail or cowardly, he wouldn’t care. All Silas needed was the people he cared about, whole and well in front of him.
She almost wished he wouldn’t—not because she didn’t want him near, but because she had trouble concentrating when he was, an ever-constant hum of music coming from his presence that she needed to listen to instead.
As if he had achieved something by remembering what she hadn’t, and for a moment—only a moment—Rosalind wondered if it would be so bad if he never got his memories back, if they simply chose to start again from the very beginning. When he was like this, he didn’t feel the hurt of his mother using him, didn’t wear that sad anger from fighting his brother at every turn.
“Don’t feel bad. It took me total amnesia to go back to it.”
I’m trying to tell you that I kept you at a distance because I knew I wouldn’t respond to you like other people did, and I had no business playing with fire. Then somewhere along the way, between our last petty argument and the fifth time you decided to sleep on my shoulder, I fell in love with you, and once I’ve tumbled that deep, I’m trying to understand everything you say no matter which language it’s in.”
“Even if the memories never come back,” he said slowly, “I’m going to love you again. I have decided to warn you in advance.”
“You don’t even know me,” she managed. “I know enough,” he countered. “From the moment you offered me that piece of popcorn and told me you didn’t like watching tragedies, I knew enough.”
Rosalind let out a shaky breath. She thought about her past, about every dark night she had spent alone, believing herself at fault for what happened to her, believing herself to be lacking as a person and punished thusly. Regret would always clothe her in a heavy shroud, change the way she moved and the way she met the world. But so too did love. And it was warmer, thicker.
suddenly she remembered this was not a room filled with people connected by blood relations and proxy family—this was a room that might determine the country’s fate.
They were operatives, but they were also people. Just people—capable of selfishness and love, with the same instincts for preservation and group protection as the first wanderers who walked this earth.
He had the temptation to pluck her up as if she were a bloom too, to hear a proper laugh and store it away in a place no one could ever take from him again. He wouldn’t dare, of course—she would probably bite him if he tried.
“I read your research, Māma.” Her mother tilted her head, eyes narrowing. “You did?” “Cover to cover. Who knew? Turns out all those years of private tutoring means I’m actually smart.”
“You either birthed us as people capable of individual thought, or you birthed us as components to be used. It can’t be both.”
Rosalind and Celia may as well start taking turns on whose mission partner went missing.
Perhaps they couldn’t take down a whole empire, but with seven agents, they could surely take down one major threat.
Still, Rosalind needed to make the promise, if not to fool her sister, then to fool the very universe into bending to her will.
God. She had a damn bad feeling about this.
“You’re free to leave if you wish, Feiyi. I’m not a tyrant. I’m just your mother.” She turned around. Her work was calling for her attention again. “But you will come back. I promise you will.”
“Tā mā de,” she muttered under her breath. Then, because that wasn’t satisfying enough, she pushed out the door and screamed an utterly incoherent noise. “You want me? Fine! Fine!” Priest dove back into the night.
“What the hell is this made out of? Solid gold?” “Gold is a soft metal,” Celia said plainly. “It can break quite easily. It’s only heavy.” When he glanced back, incredulous that he was getting a scientific correction at a time like this, Rosalind gestured over her sister’s shoulder for him to ignore Celia and continue.
“Mon Dieu,” Rosalind muttered, watching Alisa scamper out of view. “Are we sure she isn’t superhuman too?” “Maybe she was born with spider genetics,” Celia added. “I was thinking cat.” “Have we checked for a tail?” Orion blinked rapidly. “We’re joking, right?” he asked. “Please tell me we’re joking.” Rosalind patted his arm. “I hope to the high heavens that we are joking.”
“If the both of you don’t hush,” Alisa said, “I will perform this rescue mission alone.”
Like the cosmic stage taking its cue for entrance, a colossal boom struck the facility.
“I was not protecting Fortune,” he managed. “I was protecting Lang Shalin. You… are a person first and an operative… second. How many times have I taught you that?”
“I understand wanting to curl up and have a cry. Trust me, I really do,” Alisa said. “But right now you have to stop sniffling because it’s going to mess up your vision. And you need to see properly if we’re going to make our way out.”
“What happened in there?” Her throat constricted. She shook her head. Orion didn’t wait for her to manage an answer. He reached for her and brought her into his arms, clasping her close. “It’s all right,” he whispered into her hair. “It’s all right, beloved.”
Had it always been like this? Was this contrast new? In her mind’s eye, Rosalind could picture the days when she went around the world aloof, when she used to press her finger into soft places and never cared to check what bruises she made. It was so much easier back then. Her heart had always felt strange and isolated, but if it also meant she was rid of this terrible ache now…
We are not an army. We are not a government.” “We are not regular people either,”
If I am to do some good, then I must make peace with my own limits. I would lose perspective otherwise.”
“Don’t worry about me,” Alisa called, her words muffled. “I’ve always wanted to try being a hat rack for a career.”
“No need for such force in the household!” Alisa continued from the living room, her tone upbeat. “Take deep breaths! Remember, I love you all!”
He was impossible. She was going to kill him. Throw him into a ditch and report up to their superiors that he had simply tripped into an enemy trap.
Celia almost wished she hadn’t spoken and drawn his attention, because there was something intensely horrifying about the fact that he was looking at her and wasn’t looking away—that he was looking at her, and she could not hide from him.
“Is that what you think?” he asked. “That loving you is a death sentence?”
I will love you if I please. I will make you my altar, I’ll put you above everything else in this world, I’ll revel in every morsel you are made of. It’s simple—just tell me you don’t feel the same, and I’ll let you go. But I won’t accept anything else. I won’t accept your refusal on the make-believe grounds of our work.”
Brushed right at the soft space beneath her eye, like he was dusting off the stars that had fallen between them.
“Because that’s what it means to be alive. That’s what it means to fight for something—to love something. The country is good enough for us to die for. Why wouldn’t you be?”
“You have multiple charges of killing state officials,” Silas started in lieu of a greeting. “That’s high treason, Feiyi.” Phoebe stayed quiet for a moment. Then: “I know, Xielian. That’s kind of the point of doing it under a secret identity.”
Her entire eighteen years of life was built from cobbled-together pieces. Was that what he wanted to hear? She knew what she liked and disliked. She enjoyed slotting puzzles together; she was good at being an illusion for other people. She didn’t want to spend her life straitlaced, nor partaking in respectable society. Her favorite food was strawberries. Her least favorite color was orange. She had enough of a personality to make something that felt real, but when asked who she was and what she believed in, Hong Feiyi was only one part of a constructed picture, split again and again for
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No whole picture existed. Because no one would care to like her like that.
