The Briar Book of the Dead

by A.G. Slatter

although let’s be honest, the lessons our mothers teach never really sink in until years later, when we’re older and find her pain growing in the very soil of our being.

when you’re the one child who can’t do magic, you spend a lot of time with books while your cousins are being taught enchantments.

but Liv is my dear friend and such friends will hear the worst selfishness from your mouth and not judge you.

Conscience, Sandor said, was the waking bell that tolled – and some folk were utterly deaf to it.

‘Wasted potential doesn’t dissipate. It rots.’

I’m coming to the idea that forgiveness isn’t about a kindness. It’s a hard thing to do, not easy, not simple. That it’s a price as much as blood is for magic. Forgiveness has a cost.