Shadow Scale (Seraphina, #2)

by Rachel Hartman

Seraphina. I will bear this pain, suffer anything on her behalf until she’s through this storm.” “It sounds so noble when you put it that way,” I said, more snappishly than I meant to. His shoulders slumped. “I’m not trying to be noble. I’m trying to be kind.”

“And there are no years without plague. Some years it doesn’t reach the rich, but it always lurks among the poor.”