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Only through the death of the old world can we prevent the return of evil.
the begining of every political conflict, war and the birth of a tyrant
During the Sister Queens’ rule, witches wore their casting scars with pride, putting their power on display like jeweled rings and silk garments. Scars signaled wealth and rank, and most of all, magic.
The gulls shrieked overhead as the old witch stumbled up the steps to the purging platform. Unlike those who came after her, the crone neither wept nor begged for mercy, but met her fate with a stoic glare.
The defiance captured in that sentence alone is baffling
It was why Rune never cut herself. She couldn’t afford to let them find the scars.
LIGHTNING SNAKED ACROSS THE sky as Rune Winters made her way through the wet forest, barely sheltered from the rain by the pine canopy overhead. Her lantern’s glow lit the path before her, its surface broken by twisted roots and pools of rainwater.
This is just so cinematic
Rune was the girl who betrayed her grandmother.
WHAT?
Nan squeezed her in a fierce hug. She stroked Rune’s hair, the way she used to do when Rune was a child. You must be very clever now, my love. Clever and brave.
This is emotional
Shortly after the revolution, patriots ransacked the opera house, stripping it of much of its previous splendor.
How true! The first step in any occupation is to destroy and erase culture
“Rune has been out rescuing witches all night. They say the Crimson Moth only works beneath the cover of darkness.”
Devoutly loyal to the New Republic, Gideon was a ruthless, bloodthirsty witch hunter who’d sent more of Rune’s kind to the purge than any other member of the Guard.
Ooohh we love a red flag!
Rune glanced up and their eyes locked. An electric hum made the hair on her arms rise. Like being caught in a storm right before lightning strikes.
The travesties that played here now were all preapproved by the Ministry of Public Safety.
They were thinly veiled lessons about how to behave under the new regime. Reminders of who the enemy was and why you should despise them. The villains were always witches or witch sympathizers; those who ratted them out or hunted them down were the heroes.
Every time Gideon looked at the young heiress, she reminded him of the sea: steal-your-breath beautiful on the surface, with the promise of untold depths beneath.
As if politics, for them, was not life or death, but simply a matter of swapping outdated gowns for whatever the newest trend was.
He’d spent the last two hours making it for her, feeling slightly ill as he sewed every petal. Roses always brought the painful memories rushing back. But Harrow’s advice—to woo Rune—kept ringing through his head, and his mother could never resist the silk roses his father used to make her after they argued.
To her surprise, Gideon smiled. If you could call the slight twitch at the corner of his mouth a smile. Is he … teasing me?
They see us as a contamination of what is natural and good. They fear our magic the way they fear disease.
“Your laugh is like a fuse,” he said. “It lights you up.” Rune’s heart thudded. No one had ever told her that before.
For Rune, casting spells always felt like swallowing the ocean. Like she was standing in the surf as the tide came in, only it was coming in faster and more forcefully than was natural, and it took all her strength to keep her feet planted and not get thrust over.
Majora spells required someone else’s blood given with permission; Arcana spells required someone else’s blood taken against their will.
They entered the atrium, which was encircled by a massive staircase spiraling to the top floor. Overhead, the glass-domed ceiling revealed a sky full of clouds. Holding up the dome were statues of the seven Ancients, chiseled out of marble. Liberty, with her gun held high. Mercy, with her arc of doves flying toward the glass. Wisdom, with an owl on her shoulder and an open book in her hands …
Seven in total. And each entry was named after one of the seven Ancients. Mercy, Liberty, Wisdom, Justice, Amity, Patience, Fortitude.
“You are not the things that happened to you, Gideon.”
Her kiss felt the same. Like the first taste of something forbidden. Heady and delicious. Awakening all his senses at once.
His body buzzed at the lack of her. As if Rune in his arms was the only true thing in the world, and until she was there again, everything was wrong.
“I remember the sound of your laugh,” he said as the back door of the house came into view. “It pulled me like a magnet toward the beach, where I found the most beautiful girl in the world standing on the shore.”
But it wasn’t only her physical attributes that had him spinning. It was her kindness. Her thoughtfulness. Her wildness. It was her willingness to argue with him. If he wasn’t careful, he might fall in love with her.
Standing this near to her was dangerous. Like the moon and the tide, the closer he got to her, the closer he wanted her.
“Sadly, though, people don’t always know what’s best for them. Sometimes they need us to step in and protect them from themselves.”
“A good leader is brave enough to make the hard choices others don’t want to make,” continued Nicolas. “He does it for the sake of the good. He does it to protect the innocent. This is his duty.”
“The curfews, the raids, the interrogations—these are emergency measures. In an emergency, individual rights must sometimes be set aside until the danger has passed. You need to balance both things on the scales, Gideon: on one side is the temporary violation of rights to keep people safe; on the other is the very permanent possibility that Cressida Roseblood retakes her throne and exacts her revenge on us all.”
“Sparing the life of someone you hate doesn’t make you weak,” she said, perhaps more to herself than to Alex. “It makes you better than the rest of us.”
I hate you, Gideon Sharpe. I hate you so much, it hurts. And if you don’t open this door, I’ll go on hating you forever …
“Gideon, the thought of you inside that building … it felt like being held underwater.” She lowered her gaze to the pulse at the base of his throat. “Like being starved of air.”
“Powerful,” she whispered, kissing the crease between his brows away. “Like two souls fusing into one.”
I’m in love with him. Instead of getting Gideon Sharpe out of her system tonight, Rune had gone and gotten herself addicted. The hunted had fallen for the hunter.
“Every night after dinner, we’ll take a long walk through Wintersea, and I’ll pick you a bouquet of wildflowers, and we’ll talk … or be silent. I don’t really care, as long as you’re next to me.”
A bouquet of silk buttercups sprung from the packaging.
So, with his heart breaking in his chest, Gideon took the cold chains from Laila and locked them around his little brother’s wrists.
“The point is to live,” he said, tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear. “The point is to let me give you this one small thing, because I couldn’t give you the rest.”
