The Courting of Bristol Keats (The Courting of Bristol Keats, #1)

by Mary E. Pearson

Our past is a shadow that follows us. For better or worse, it shapes us, and sometimes it controls us.

Their pasts together would remain forever unresolved. It was impossible to move forward when part of you was trapped in the past.

She had been the sun rising in his mornings and the moon whispering him to sleep at night.

Life wasn’t always about change but sometimes about sameness. And sometimes sameness made you look beneath the surface, look at the bones that held it all together—and the flaws that could be its undoing. Change was a distraction. Sameness demanded reflection. Bristol wondered if it was the sameness that drove her mother away. That it made her see things she didn’t want to see.

But even perfection was no guarantee of survival.

Her passion was not in the creation of art but in studying its history. Its twists, turns, genius, and resilience; its continuity, and the way it kept reinventing itself over and over again on the shoulders of what came before. It was like following a treasure map that revealed the minds, aspirations, and machinations of millennia.

Bristol learned there were five kinds of magic. The High Witch listed them in beautiful scrolled writing on a smoky veil that hung in the air. Innate magic—the kind you are born with. Learned magic that must be practiced. Magic that is gifted, mostly in the form of amulets. Magic that is unanchored—wild, unpredictable, but, luckily, rare. Dark magic that feeds on the user, the most dangerous kind to practice.

“Some fae have a natural kinship with one element or another, which is why, here in Danu, they are referred to as kinship magics. Kasta, for instance, has a kinship with water. She can summon mists, rouse rough seas, or even part rivers with little effort.” She explained about other kinships too, like those with plants and animals, and how a few rare fae were graced with multiple kinships, which made them especially powerful, and she compared them to the old gods.

“Life passes them by on a daily basis, but they can’t be part of it. By the time their sentence is over, they beg for death.”

Somewhere out there, between all the wild places, her father might be hiding, waiting for someone to rescue him. And that someone was her.

They were bound together in every way, and nothing could come between them. With his last forceful thrust, he finally relaxed against her, spent, his breaths still shuddering, raw and uneven.

“Don’t make me choose between you and my father. You’ve both made some desperate and bad decisions … but I still love you both.”

“Yes, I love you. I’m hurt, Tyghan. I’m angry. But I haven’t stopped loving you.”