Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands (Emily Wilde, #2)

by Heather Fawcett

“The path is eternal,” he said. “But you mustn’t sleep—I made that mistake. Turn left at the ghosts with ash in their hair, then left at the evergreen wood, and straight through the vale where my brother will die. If you lose your way, you will lose only yourself, but if you lose the path, you will lose everything you never knew you had.”

“Dear Emily,” he said as I sat down, not troubling to lift his head from his hand but smiling at me slantwise. “You look as if you’ve come from a wrestling match with one of your books. May I ask who won?”

“Where would I be without you, Em?” he said. “Probably still flailing about in Germany, looking for your door,” I said. “Meanwhile, I would be sleeping more soundly without a marriage proposal from a faerie king dangling over my head.”

Watching Wendell with a sword is like watching a bird leap from a branch—there is something thoughtless about it, innate. One has the sense that he is less himself without a sword, that wielding it returns him to the element most natural to him.

“Did you enchant my pencil?” I demanded. “I enchanted all of your pencils,” he said without opening his eyes. “You always have at least one upon your person. I knew they would come in handy.” He added, as I continued to stare at him, “Well, I can’t carry a bloody sword around with me everywhere,” misunderstanding entirely. “Why didn’t you enchant your own pencils?” I groused. “I would have, but I can never remember where I put them.”

“Can’t you sense what enchantments are stored in the stones?” I demanded. “No!” I threw my hands up in frustration. “Then why do you keep on breaking them?” “Because you told me to, you lunatic!”

I wrote St. Liesl on the board—not for any particular reason, but because, in truth, he was right about me: I enjoyed writing things on blackboards.

“The problem is not the packing, I admit; I simply dislike travelling. Why people wish to wander to and fro when they could simply remain at home is something I will never understand. Everything is the way I like it here.”

in order to be surprised, I could not have known already that you are capable of anything.