The Priory of the Orange Tree (The Roots of Chaos, #1)

by Samantha Shannon

Art is not one great act of creation, but many small ones. When you read one of my poems, you fail to see the weeks of careful work it took me to build it—the thinking, the scratched-out words, the pages I burned in disgust. All you see, in the end, is what I want you to see. Such is politics.”

I believe that I would marry this ship, were I a ship myself.”

With words alone, he could beautify the dullest object or bring civilizations rising from the dust. For Niclays, he had been a sunray, illuminating every facet of his world.

Sea sisters, Susa had called them once. Two pearls formed in the same oyster.

Then the Prioress was lifting a cup to her lips, saying it was the blood of the Mother. It tasted like sunlight and laughter and prayer. She had burned like this in the days that followed, burned until the fire melted away her ignorance. That day she had been born anew.

Ead's Turning

The sun was an open wound, the sky a thousand variations on pink. A pale mist hung over the plain.

“You fear for your people, but cannot show it to your court. You wear so much armor by daylight that, by night, you can carry it no longer. By night, you are only flesh. And even the flesh of a queen is prone to fear.”

“In darkness, we are naked. Our truest selves. Night is when fear comes to us at its fullest, when we have no way to fight it,” Ead continued. “It will do everything it can to seep inside you. Sometimes it may succeed—but never think that you are the night.”

With her wind-spun hair and eyes bright from the hunt, Sabran Berethnet looked almost carefree—and for the first time in years, Ead felt her own cares lifted from her shoulders. Like seeds from a dandelion clock.

What is below must be balanced by what is above, and in this is the precision of the universe. Fire ascends from the earth, light descends from the sky. Too much of one doth inflame the other, and in this is the extinction of the universe.

No woman should be made to fear that she was not enough.

Her heart had the wings of a flock of birds.

They had avoided any more conversation about religion. Likely they would never agree on the matter. For now, however, they had the same desire to see Virtudom survive.

Death came for them like a desert wind.

Allies now, yet they seemed to sit on a glass in that moment—a glass broken into faultlines of religion and inheritance.

“Piety can turn the power-hungry into monsters,” Ead said. “They can twist any teaching to justify their actions.”

“We mean to reforge with love what greed has broken.

Ead shivered with anticipation as she relearned every detail of the woman she had left behind.

She would throw herself on the mercy of the desert if it meant that she could have this woman.

Mother, make me worthy. She pressed her lips to the cold blade. I will finish all that you began.

She must be destined to be rootless, like a seed tossed on the wind.

“I am seated on a god,” he said, moonstruck. “I am not worthy of this.” At least somebody saw this nightmare as a blessing.

“They raise us to be soft as silk, distract us with luxury and wealth beyond measure, so we never rock the boat that carries us. They expect us to be so bored by our power that we let them do the ruling in our stead. Behind every throne is a masked servant who seeks only to make a puppet of the one who sits on it. My esteemed grandmother taught me this.”

She felt sculpted from marble. Her limbs cleaved to the bed, as an effigy was bound forever to the tomb. In the dark spots in her vision, somebody was praying for her soul.

He was not imposing in the physical sense; he was fine-boned, slim as a feather, almost delicate at first glance—but his eyes were dungeons. Once he had you in his gaze, you were his until he let it go.

They spun him a cocoon, two seamsters weaving with the waves. Steam filled the air as they knitted the Nameless One into the sea, and the darkness quenched the hot coal of his heart.

“He needed your love. The best way I could honor the promises I made him was to let him have it in peace. And to let him love you in return.” She meant it. The sincerity of her belief was

Sometimes, when she looked at Sabran, she almost believed she was the Melancholy King, chasing a mirage across the dunes. Then Sabran would touch her lips to hers, or come to her bedside by moonlight, and she would know that it was real.

would live alone for fifty years to have one day with you.”