The Familiar

by Leigh Bardugo

Luzia knew she had done too much and yet she didn’t want to stop. En lo oskuro es todo uno. The song took shape easily, as if it had been waiting for her; it sent a chill through her like a cloud passing over the sun.

Theres an odd trance that often accompanies bouts of madness; a dissociation between body and mind that leaves one unable to change their current state. Inertia.

But it had been Hualit who taught Luzia those precious, perilous scraps of language, that mix of Hebrew and Spanish and Turkish and Greek that arrived in letters carried over land and sea.

Hualit can govern both her beauty and magic without treatung it like its coin to spend? Miracle!

It was irritating to realize how handsome he was. They’d been on more equal footing when he looked like he might collapse.

I love yhis dtnamic

“Come, comb my hair,” she said. “Luzia—” “Come, comb my hair. I need to know that what I want matters to someone.”

He died that way, alone in his bed, afraid to leave, afraid to stay, afraid to whisper anything but “tomorrow.”