A Shadow Bright and Burning (Kingdom on Fire, #1)

by Jessica Cluess

“You don’t want this one,” he said, waving his four arms at me.

Corsets were not designed for battling monsters.

“How I do what I do, but not how to do what I do? What if what I do has to do with my knowledge of what to do, and doing requires only the knowledge of doing? What would you do then?” I blinked. “I believe you hurt my brain.”

Listen, my adorable bonfire,

“That was my only teapot. Well. Can’t be helped!”

Knowledge is as powerful as fire. The brighter it burns, the more it devours.

I’d no idea how a sprouty onion made one feel wanted, but there were many things I didn’t understand.

“Granted, you’re as much fun as pig slop dressed up for a Friday night, but you can’t have everything.”

“I have always been uncomfortable with fragile things, like feelings and confessions. Butterflies, too.”

“Sometimes I believe that our lives are lived in an endless cycle,” he said. “That our error becomes our children’s burden, and eventually that burden becomes their error, and so on. The only way out of it is to break the cycle.

“I want to get smashed, too,” Eliza whispered.

“Oh, my poor bones. Poor back. And you,” he said, whirling to face me. “The next time you get a letter, open it! Were you raised in a barn, you uncivilized snipe? It’s rude!”

There was one friend, however, I could always rely upon. “Howel, wait,” Blackwood called as he came over to me.