The Seventh Bride

by T. Kingfisher

She could slam doors and drag her feet and feed the chickens in as furious a fashion as possible, but her anger was no more effective than a butterfly’s. No one was going to listen.

But if your parents were wicked, you needn’t worry about pleasing them. When they were doing the best they could, you had no traction at all.

It was the smile of a man who found nothing funny and everything amusing.

She was still going somewhere terrible, but she had a hedgehog, dammit.

It poked its nose over the pocket edge and nodded approvingly. Apparently, they had been high-quality slugs.

Rhea followed, because when your future husband is a mad sorcerer, following a hedgehog sometimes seems like a good option.

“It is sometimes easier to be punished for something than it is to be a victim of random cruelty. As long as Ingeth can tell herself that her voice was taken from her because she committed some sin, then she has some control of it, you understand? Otherwise it was simply a terrible thing that happened. And if terrible things are allowed to happen to people that don’t deserve them, then the world is terrible and random and cruel. Which it is,” she added, pointing the spoon in Rhea’s direction, “but there’s not much comfort in that.”

I am not curling into a little ball and screaming. I wish someone else were here to be impressed by how much I am not screaming right now.