What Feasts at Night (Sworn Soldier, #2)

by T. Kingfisher

And then she leaned forward and inhaled again, and I learned that it was possible to lose...

My fingers sank into his hide as if it were no thicker than a moth’s wing, and plunged into something dry and spongy, which crumbled away from my touch.

great rags of skin came with it, sliding off Hob’s skull as if they were barely anchored to the bone.

I’d learned long ago that things you don’t see

can kill you, but at least the visions don’t stalk your mind for decades after.

When I slapped it away, shreds of horsehide clung to my face.

And if it was a dream, then the moroi could find me.

For the Widow looked up almost immediately, her eyes scanning the room. They passed over me in the doorway, unseeing, and I realized, before I could even begin to

hope, that she couldn’t see me. She was reacting to the door having opened, nothing more.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Bors said mournfully beside me. “She can’t see me, either.”

I thrashed but she was as heavy as guilt.

She pulled at me and it seemed like not just the air but the whole world should vanish inside her. First my lungs would unravel and then my heart and guts and bones, all of them turned to threads and dragged out through my mouth until I was left a hollowed-out husk.

The smell cleared my sinuses like a fox clears a henhouse.

teeth and a pale crust of white and gray curved in the rough shape of a cheek.

I didn’t know what had happened that night after I jumped between the moroi and the Widow, and

“Until next we meet, young sinner! If you die before me, we’ll drink the country dry in your memory.”

“May we always have the choice to err on the side of mercy,”

“It’s not the place’s fault,” he said reasonably. “It was here before she was. It doesn’t deserve to fall apart because something bad happened here.”

“Something bad happened to both of us, too. We don’t deserve to fall apart either.”