The Pale Dreamer (The Bone Season, #0.5)

by Samantha Shannon

‘Did you bring that coffee, darling?’ he asked. There were greyish circles under his eyes. ‘I hate myself for saying this,’ Eliza said, ‘but we don’t have time for coffee.’

Blasphemy!!!!! 😨😱

Death by reason of being too proud to make four cups of tea. Death by tea.

‘Stay by the phone, Eliza,’ he called. ‘No coffee runs.’ Her voice floated back from the office: ‘You’re a cruel man, Nicklas Nygård.’

You monster 😠

‘Being in this syndicate will toughen you up, but don’t let it turn you to stone. Don’t get too big for your boots. And always question what you’re told. Remember what it’s like to be an outsider, a nobody. Don’t look down on the people who end up at the bottom. Give a bit of coin to the gutterlings. Stay humble. And keep your mind open. You might find it repays you one day.’

Nick burst out laughing. My whole body warmed up, as if the sun was on it. It was harder not to fall in love with him when he laughed. Not that I was falling in love with him.

Some people you meet in life, and they just click with you. It doesn’t matter how much you have in common; you just work, somehow. That was Nick to me.

The Pale Dreamer did not show fear. She was confident in her decisions. Her face was a mask.

I thought of how Anne Naylor had been beaten and terrorised, treated like dirt, and how no one had helped her. How that happened all too often. How it still happened now, three centuries later. I would fight this battle with her, even if it killed me. I would help give her the justice she had been denied in life.

Quietly, in the shadows – but by existing, by thriving, by daring to profit from our gifts, we defied Scion. I knew from experience that defying them through other means would only end in all our deaths. This was the way things were, and we were content with this, with our secret mutiny.