Avatar: The Shadow of Kyoshi (The Kyoshi Novels, #2)

by F.C. Yee

My daughter loves you. Which means you are also my daughter. For better or worse, you are a part of our family.

Manhandling the Fire Lord was probably punishable by death, but right now Kyoshi could only see a scared young person whose weakness was going to get everyone killed. She saw herself. And she hated it.

Human beings could drape themselves in titles and etiquette, but at their hearts they were all the same animal.

“Let me make myself perfectly clear. You live on top of what I control. Your islands are surrounded by my waves. You fill your very lungs at my discretion. So if I hear any news about ‘Yun’ being executed, you will truly learn what it’s like when the spirits forsake you in the face of the elements.”

They were each other’s beacons, two torches in the darkness.

Despite the opposition of man and spirits, this was the Era of Kyoshi.

All she knew as she rocked back and forth, cradling the girl she loved in a lullaby of grief, was that if Rangi was taken from her, she would no longer be Kyoshi. She would no longer be human. She would be forever on the other side of the rift, among the swirling colors of the void she’d glimpsed in the Spirit World, watching humans from afar, a terrible and alien presence.

People shouldn’t have everything they want. No one is entitled to their every desire. To live in balance, we must willingly decide not to take all that we can from the world, and from others.”