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

by Samantha Shannon

His younger self urged him to accept the proposal, if only for the sake of excitement. Before his older, wiser self could intervene, the woman moved away.

All the world is a cage in a young girl’s eyes.”

Their ideas about magic were born of fear of what they could not understand.

Almost every street housed a driftwood shrine and a basin of salt water.

he loved Ead as he loved Margret, as he loved Sabran. As a sister.

Loth, one of the girlies

“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.”

Ead burrowed into the fur collar of her cloak as she passed the statue of Glorian the Third, the queen who had led Inys through the Grief of Ages. It depicted her riding in armor, full to bursting with child, sword raised in defiance.

She thought of Sabran’s cool touch on her hand. When she slept, she dreamed of a bloodred rose against her lips.

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

Try not to be irritating, my lord.

The life of the child took precedence over that of the mother, since there was no evidence that the women of the House of Berethnet could conceive more than once.

. . . Fire ascends from the earth, light descends from the sky. Too much of one doth inflame the other,

Something was changing in her. A feeling, small as a rosebud, was opening its petals.

Roses, rose water as symbol of their love

Centuries ago, a sorceress was said to rule over an island called Komoridu. Black doves and white crows flocked to her, for she was mother to the outcasts. “The story is told from the perspective of an unnamed woman, who is shunned by the people of Ginura. She hears whispers of Komoridu, where all are welcome, and decides she must get there by any means necessary. When she finally does, she goes to visit the fabled sorceress, whose power comes from a mulberry tree. A source of eternal life.”

Berethnet sovereigns were prone to what the Inysh called grievoushead—periods of sadness, with or without a discernible root. Carnelian the Fifth had been known as the Mourning Dove,

Love and fear do strange things to our souls. The dreams they bring, those dreams that leave us drenched in salt water and gasping for breath as if we might die—those, we call unquiet dreams. And only the scent of a rose can avert them.”

“Margret,” he said, “you are my child. I forgave you all your sins on the first day of your life.”

But what ruler made history by avoiding it?”

“Some truths,” he said, “are safest buried. Some castles best kept in the sky. There’s promise in tales that are yet to be spoken. In the shadow realm, known only to the few.”