The Bone Witch (The Bone Witch, #1)

by Rin Chupeco

Seventeen, I thought. She could not be older than seventeen years. Seventeen could explain the poetry of her face, with her skin brown and unblemished. Seventeen explained the pertness of her nose, the determined tilt to her chin. But seventeen did not explain the oldness in her eyes, large twin pools of black from where no light could escape.

Seventeen did not explain why she stood on that strange, graying beach, alone, with monsters’ corpses for company.

“You think in the same way men drink, Tea,” my father once said, “far too much—under the delusion it is too little.”

“She can’t help herself,” Rose said. “Sometimes you can’t help who you love or for how long.”

Lady Mykaela was telling me the reason bone witches were feared: not because we could control daeva but because daeva were not the only ones we could choose to compel.

“Fire is a cleansing tool, and to leap over it is to clean themselves of all sickness and evil in anticipation of the coming year.”

The city rich are not like bees in a hive that work together to share honey for all. The city rich are like the jungle apes; they show off their red bottoms and beat their chests because they fear to be culled from the herd if they show weakness.

A part of me balked at having traveled so far only to be turned away, but another part rejoiced at the possibility that they would return me to my family if I failed.

I recalled the hostility of the villagers, people I had long considered to be friends. In truth, I had thought much like them, but now that I was on the other side of that hate, I refused to go back to that way of thinking.

When people cut us, we are expected to do only two things: smile and bleed.”

Defeat them in war and beguile them in peacetime—Vernasha

It was hard for me to imagine her as having been a beautiful asha in her youth like Lady Mykaela claimed, because while she was as thin as a broomstick, her skin sagged and folded in the worst of ways, like yards of ungainly, sickly-yellow cloth that moved and breathed when she did.

Fox eyed the entrance leading into the Valerian. “Even with the old prune inside?” “Fox!” “Isn’t she? She looks like an old fruit left to dry out in the sun for so long that it grew hungry and tried eating its own face.”

There is no greater strength than the ability to understand and accept your own flaws.”

“The sadness can eat you up sometimes, remembering what could have been, what you should have done.

We can endure any amount of sadness for the people we love.

People will never be what you make of them, but at least your own heart stays yours and true.”

There is always something new to discover every day, no matter how skilled you are.”

“Duty means doing something not because you like it but because you’re supposed to,”

“Then perhaps we should carve a world one day where the strength lies in who you are rather than in what they expect you to be.”

He is a wise man but often sad—though I have found that both frequently go hand in hand.”

Being a noble didn’t exempt you from being fool born.

Breeding isn’t what you were born as; breeding is what you grow to be.

“There is no dishonor to winning a war!”

“Everyone is believed to have two faces—one they show to the public and one they wear in private. The first face is their shaxsiat, or their honor. The second face is their ehteram, their dignity.

“Everyone is a puzzle, Tea, made of interlocking tiles you must piece together to form a picture of their souls. But to successfully build them, you must have an idea of their strengths as well as their weaknesses.

“Colder, without feeling; grayer, without seeing. Alive but without aim. Hunger without flavor.”

‘Why do you seek to unman me, Brother? My fields I have given freely, and my waters you can drink your fill. Do not seek what is not yours to take, for the world will suffer.’

“I chose you,” she said quietly, “because you know what it feels like to want revenge when they kill the person you love. So do I.”

How must Hollow Knife have felt when he created such monsters? How must the followers of Blade that Soars have felt to turn and see such horrors at their kingdoms’ borders?

“If there is one thing I have learned from both our trades, it is that we must always be in the business of forgiveness, lest we become consumed by our anger.”