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Magic and magician must between them balance. Magic itself is chaos. The magician must be calm. A fractured self is a poor vessel for power, spilling power without focus or measure from every crack.
“Are you made of anything but mysteries?”
People survived by being cautious, but they got ahead by being bold.
“I’ve found that watching is the quickest way to learn, and the safest way to stay alive.”
“Seeing the threads of the world is one thing. Plucking at them is another. Knowing how to make music from them, well … let us say this is not a simple thing at all.
“Everyone’s immortal until they’re not.”
“You have a skewed moral compass, Alucard.” “So I’ve been told.”
She wanted to know the truth. Who was Delilah Bard? What was she? The first was a question she thought she knew the answer to, but the second … she’d tried not to bother with it, but as Kell had pointed out so many times, she shouldn’t be here. Shouldn’t be alive, for that matter. She bent most of the rules. She broke the rest. And she wanted to know why. How. If she was just a blip in the universe, an anomaly, or something more.
Lila marveled at the way the man shifted to fit his environment. She knew how to adapt well enough, but Alucard knew how to transform.
It was a performance, one that was entertaining to watch. Lila wondered for perhaps the hundredth time which version of Alucard was the real one, or if, somehow, they were all real, each in its own way.
“Death comes for us all, Brother. You cannot hide from it forever. We will die one day, you and I.” “And that doesn’t frighten you?” Rhy shrugged. “Not nearly as much as the idea of wasting a perfectly good life in fear of it.
People could only hurt you if you cared enough to let them.
“Reputations, they are loud things.”
She might have spent the last four months as a privateer, but she had spent years as a shadow.
She’d forgotten about his gift for seeing the magic in people. It would make a handy skill for a thief, and Lila wondered, not for the first time, if there was a way to steal talents the way one did trinkets.
A picture of what someone should be, not what they were.
“I’ve never been a fan of farewells. Or hellos, for that matter. Unnecessary punctuation.
Alucard frowned. “You know the most valuable currency in life, Bard?” “What?” “A favor.” His eyes narrowed. “I now owe those men. And you owe me.”
That was the hardest part of being plunged into a world where magic was possible. It made you wonder if everything was. Lila was neither a skeptic nor a believer; she relied on her gut and the world she could see. But the world she could see had gotten considerably stranger.
He’d entrusted her with a difficult task once, he’d kept her secrets twice, and he’d let her choose her own path at every turn.
people are the most variable and important component in the equation of magic. Magic itself is, after all, a constant, a pure and steady source, like water. People, and the world they shape—they are the conduits of magic, determining its nature, coloring its energy, the way a dye does water. You of all people should be able to see that magic changes in the hands of men. It is an element to be shaped.
Standing right in front of a mark while you pocketed their coins. Smiling while you stole. Looking them in the eye and daring them to see past the ruse. Because the best tricks were the ones pulled off not while the mark’s back was turned, but while they were watching.
Not every past is worth holding onto.”
“The thing about freedom, Kell? It doesn’t come naturally. Almost no one has it handed to them. I’m free because I fought for it. You’re supposed to be the most powerful magician in all the worlds. If you don’t want to be here, then go.”
