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

by V.E. Schwab

Delilah Bard had a way of finding trouble. She’d always thought it was better than letting trouble find her,

Kell looked at his brother with a mixture of surprise and awe. “You know,” he said, taking up the mask, “if you can rule half as well as you can lie, you’re going to make an incredible king.”

But belonging meant caring, and caring was a dangerous thing.

Lila had forgotten the way Red London glittered with it, and the more time she spent here, the more she realized that Kell really didn’t belong. He didn’t fit in with the clashes of color, the laughter and jostle and sparkle of magic. He was too understated.

“I do not know why you two are circling each other like stars. It is not my cosmic dance. But I do know that you come asking after one another, when only a few strides and a handful of stairs divide you.”

But she kissed him first. The last time—the only time—it had been nothing but a ghost of lips against his, there and gone, so little to it, a kiss stolen for luck.

They crashed into each other as if propelled by gravity, and he didn’t know which of them was the object and which the earth, only that they were colliding.