Unnatural Magic

by C.M. Waggoner

all problems could be solved with hard work, a pleasant smile, and advanced mathematics.

You couldn’t argue with a blizzard or with Tsira’s mother, but at least the blizzard wouldn’t criticize your logic if you tried.

The fact of the matter was that he had as much actual experience of being wrapped in the embrace of a lover as he had in riding camels—which was to say that he had done both once, briefly and uncomfortably.

She was, however, irreproachably polite, and she thought that one of the essential abilities of a polite and genteel young lady was to create pleasant fictions in order to preserve her companions from unpleasant truths.

we are not shrinking, sighing women. We are bold, and the bold always take a good breakfast.”

On his left was a young man wearing a Hexian tunic in rumpled black silk. His long black hair was in disarray, and the look on his face suggested that he would much rather be still abed than sitting through dozens of wizarding auditions.

Jeckran had always classed listening to anecdotes from other people’s childhoods as one of the more detestable possible uses of his time, but the thought of Tsira having ever been a child who had eaten honeycomb filled him with sensations of such tenderness that he was quite embarrassed by himself. It was a confoundedly uncomfortable thing to be in love.

She was in the habit of apologizing for making faces that men thought weren’t very pretty. It occurred to her, very briefly, that she resented being made to think about her face when she was trying to focus on the contents of her mind.

i knew this man was a messy bisexual

“If believing in the rights of ladies to publicly engage in serious scholarship and of gentlemen to publicly wear a delicious magenta taffeta in the summer makes me a radical, then I can only embrace the label.”

i kinda dig evil gay ppl in this book

Prettiness is lent to you by youth; attractiveness is purchased with experience.”