A Darker Shade of Magic (Shades of Magic, #1)

by V.E. Schwab

For the ones who dream of stranger worlds

Such is the quandary when it comes to magic, that it is not an issue of strength but of balance. For too little power, and we become weak. Too much, and we become something else entirely.

Looking for trouble, he’d say. You’re gonna look till you find it. Trouble is the looker, she’d answer. It keeps looking till it finds you. Might as well find it first. Why do you want to die? I don’t, she’d say. I just want to live.

Are you afraid of dying? Holland had asked him in the alley. And Kell was. Had always been, ever since he could remember. He feared not living, feared ceasing to exist.

Rhy laughed silently. “I apologize for anything I might have done. I was not myself.” “I apologize for shooting you in the leg,” said Lila. “I was myself entirely.”

“That was the day the world began to wither.” He drove the knife into the Ost board as he passed. “That was the day the Magic decided it would rather die than bow.”