A Gathering of Shadows (Shades of Magic, #2)

by V.E. Schwab

I am Delilah Bard, she thought as the ropes cut into her skin. I am a thief and a pirate and a traveler. I have set foot in three different worlds, and lived. I have shed the blood of royals and held magic in my hands. And a ship full of men cannot do what I can. I don’t need any of you. I am one of a damned kind.

Luckily, she’d never been devout. Never believed in higher powers, never attended church, never prayed before bed. In fact, the only person Lila had ever prayed to was herself.

Leave. Lila recognized that voice, not from the sea, but from the streets of Grey London—it belonged to her, to the girl she’d been for so many years. Desperate, distrustful of anything that wasn’t hers, and hers alone. Leave, it urged. But Lila didn’t want to. And that scared her more than anything.

Magic is tangled, so you must be smooth. Magic is wild, so you must be tame. Magic is chaos, so you must be calm.

“But what stops one from committing sins, if they have nothing to fear?” Kell shrugged. “I’ve seen people sin in the name of god, and in the name of magic. People misuse their higher powers, no matter what form they take.”

“Everyone’s immortal until they’re not.”

“Politics is a dance until the moment it becomes a war. And we control the music.”

“Strength and weakness are tangled things,” the Aven Essen had said. “They look so much alike, we often confuse them, the way we confuse magic and power.”

“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.

assumptions were made to take the place of facts,

“We’re all here for a reason, Bard. Some reasons are just bigger than others. So I guess I’m not scared of who you are, or even what you are. I’m scared of why you are.”

Hang this, she thought. What a waste of life, to stand around and think so much on every little thing. What did it matter why she wanted to see the captain? She simply did.

People either stole to stay alive or to feel alive. She had to imagine that they ran away for the same reasons.

Lila had never really bought into fate, but like most people who disavowed religion, she could summon a measure of belief when it was necessary.

In all of Arnes, there was only one person capable of flustering the prince, of reducing him from a proud royal to a nervous youth, and that was Alucard Emery.

that was too much like fate, and Lila didn’t put much stock in that. A person chose their path. Or they made a new one.

Dangerous. Reckless. Foolish. Mad. The words were beginning to feel more like badges of pride than blows.

“Impossibility is a thing that begs to be disproven,