Shadow Scale (Seraphina, #2)

by Rachel Hartman

“I will see you both in Goredd, then, when I clasp your hands across the smoking ashes of my enemies.” “Isn’t that what you’re hoping to avoid by sneaking up the Omiga?” Kiggs said. Comonot considered. “Yes, but I liked the sound of those words. Interesting.”

“The thing about reason,” I said slowly, thinking of Comonot’s earlier explanation as I spoke, “is that there’s a geometry to it. It travels in a straight line, so slightly different beginnings can lead you to wildly divergent endpoints.

If you followed logic all the way back to its origin, did you inevitably end up at a point of illogic, an article of faith? Even an indisputable fact must be chosen as the place to start reasoning, given weight by a mind that believed in its worth.

Everything is made of other, tiny things, and we make some of the smallest do work for us by bothering them with magnetth.”

Mitha swiveled one eye cone, which I was beginning to understand was a quigutl wink, and said, “There are worlds within worlds, Seraphina.”

And, Seraphina,” he added, “I heard your tone just then, and recognized how it contradicted your words. That’s how astute and sensitive my experience has made me.” I rolled my eyes for the benefit of the royal cousins.

Nothing was just one thing; there were worlds within worlds. Those of us who trod the line between were blessed and burdened with both.