Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear (Wayward Children, #10)

by Seanan McGuire

This was not her choice. This was her body, but it was not her decision, and that alone made it very heavy, and difficult to carry.

Privately, Nadya thought Pansy was less than perfectly content, and maybe shouldn’t have been allowed to have authority over another human being until she figured out how to be kinder to herself.

She’d never really considered her missing arm a disability—it was just the way she was made, and always had been, and it didn’t stop her from doing anything she wanted to do—and now it was all the other children could see.

Stories had to have beginnings, which meant someone had to be where they were beginning, or there was no purpose to them. She was just at the beginning of a story, that was all, and this was perfectly possible.

“Trust is an important gift, difficult to give and easy to break. But if you trust me, I shall do my best to trust you, and believe you when you speak to me.

She’s perfect, Ivan. Perfect for Belyyreka, and perfect for me.”

A future is a monster of its own breed, different for everyone, and ever inescapable.