When Among Crows (Curse Bearer, #1)

by Veronica Roth

It’s only then that his hands tremble.

Dymitr’s cheeks go pink in a way that Niko refuses to find charming.

“I brought bandages,” he says. “So we can have our Florence Nightingale moment, if you’d like.”

“Well, fuck,” Ala says, and Dymitr swallows a laugh. He feels like he’s teetering at the very edge of his control.

a stuffed squirrel wearing a cowboy hat perched on an old writing desk; a guitar with broken strings hanging on the wall;

Dymitr can’t feel his hands. Or really, he can feel them, but they don’t seem to be attached to his body correctly; they feel too heavy and too big for him. He squeezes them into fists, briefly, to ground himself, but it doesn’t quite work.

She doesn’t reassure him, and he doesn’t expect her to. No adult in his life has ever reassured him,

It hums with the same feeling of rightness a person gets in their sleep when they shift into a comfortable position.