Magic Triumphs (Kate Daniels, #10)

by Ilona Andrews

“Huny.” Conlan sniffled. “I don’t negotiate with terrorists. Oatmeal or nothing.”

About fifteen minutes into the drive, Conlan gave up singing the sad song of his people and fell asleep.

Grendel lay perfectly still, panting, his eyes shining, and generally acting like being hugged by a sleeping monster-child was his highest aspiration in life and now that dream had been fulfilled.

“It’s funny how you use logic in an argument and think it will persuade me.”

After she’d repeatedly shown the money to me, and I confirmed several times that it was, indeed, her own money, she went out shopping for the first time and we got to find out what $1,200 of candy looked like.

“Stubborn child,” the Queen of Shinar said. “Your world will burn until everything turns to ash. You’ll live through unspeakable horrors. You’ll see everyone you love fall, and you’ll wish you were dead, but you won’t die, because you are the Princess of Shinar, the beacon of your people’s hope, and if you succumb, that hope will perish with you. Your memories will become your torture. You’ll carry that burden with you as you wade through a sea of blood, and when you emerge, you’ll become me, your victory a hollow trinket. I cannot watch you suffer through it. You and that boy are everything I have. You are the family I lost and found. Call your father. Show him the creature. Tell him the yeddimur are

You’ll carry that burden with you as you wade through a sea of blood, and when you emerge, you’ll become me, your victory a hollow trinket. I cannot watch you suffer through it. You and that boy are everything I have. You are the family I lost and found. Call your father. Show him the creature. Tell him the yeddimur are

here. Together we have a chance. Do that for me, In-Shinar. Do that because I’m yo...

turned back to the kitchen and called out, “Saiman is here and he wants to help us for free.” Derek clamped his hand to his chest and dropped to the floor. “Oh gods!” Julie waved her hands. “Hide the children. The Apocalypse is coming. The werewolves are fainting!”

“Sometimes you hero-worship the wrong person, and when they fail you, it hurts.”

“Of all the insults out there, this is what you come up with? Pathetic.”

“You and what army, sirrah? I’m the Princess of Shinar, the Blood Blade of Atlanta. My line stretches thousands of years into the past. My family was building palaces while your ancestors cringed inside their mud huts. You’re weak, stupid, and less. What threat could you possibly be? You dream of power I already have. A tiger doesn’t notice a worm she crushes under her paw. Slither, little worm. Slither away as fast as you can.”

For the first time in my life, I wished magic had never come.

But I’ve forgiven Hugh, because if I don’t forgive him, there is no hope for forgiveness for someone like me.”

“Sometimes I jump on the table and kick people in the face, but I’m always civil about it.”

I rolled my eyes. “You’re right. That’s totally it. I’ve beheld your godly manliness and now I’m overcome with womanly trepidation. Get over yourself.”

The world was going crazy. Nothing left to do but hold on and yell “Wheee!” at strategic moments.

“Do people just walk into your house like they own the place?” Hugh asked Curran. “You have no idea,” Curran told him. Dali set the box on the table in front of Hugh. “I need to know what this is.” “I’m eating,” he said. I took my coffee cup off the table and moved out of the way. This should be interesting. Dali’s eyes lit up. “You listen to me—” “You barged into the house of the closest person I have to a sister and you interrupted my breakfast.”

He doesn’t see me as a daughter whom he can teach. He sees me as a sword he can use. Once in a while he rubs me the wrong way and I cut him, and he’s surprised and pleased the sword is sharp, but it never goes past that.”

“You don’t do subtle. Your subtle is pulling a kick so you don’t kill a man with it, just break his bones.”

My mother used to say that family, blood or found, was our salvation. It was the net that caught us when we drowned and gently lifted us up out of the raging waters. She was wise, my mother.