Swordheart (Swordheart, #1)

by T. Kingfisher

The bird in question was a small, finch-like creature that could have perched easily on Halla’s smallest finger, had she been foolish enough to stick her finger in its cage, which she wasn’t. It had a red beak and red eyes and most of the time it sang a repetitive three-note song that went, “tweedle-tweedle-twee!” Occasionally, its eyes would flash green and it would begin roaring in an impossibly deep voice about the end of the world and the screams of the damned.

“I know what it is to lose your connection to the people before you,” she said, and he heard the heaviness of that knowledge in her voice. “To come unmoored in history. It’s why I became a historian in the first place. We must help each other find our place again.”