A Song of Wraiths and Ruin (A Song of Wraiths and Ruin, #1)

by Roseanne A. Brown

To listen to a griot was to enter a new world, one where heroes danced across the heavens with spirits in their wake and gods churned mountains into being with a flick of their wrists.

Though Karina wasn’t facing her maid, she knew Aminata was clapping along, scowl and all. In seconds, everyone in the room had joined her in the beat, banging whatever they had on hand against their tables. Grinning a grin that would put a hyena’s to shame, she began to play. It was still “The Ballad of Bahia Alahari,” but Karina bent the melody almost beyond recognition. Where the bard had focused on the stifling yet beautiful grief the song was known for, Karina pushed the beat to a frenzy, playing at a speed normally used for the fastest dance songs. She brought the song to a crescendo where she should have quieted and bit into the parts that were meant to be soft.

The first years after the fire were a massive blur, but her one solid memory from that time was of an aching desire for comfort that never came. Karina had molded her grief into a sword, poised to harm anyone who dared get close. But her mother had built hers into a wall, and no sword, no matter how sharp, could take down defenses so strong.

Socerors

It was her mother’s agility in battle that had earned her the nickname Kestrel to begin with, but Karina had never seen her fight firsthand. Even through the confusion and terror, Karina’s breath caught as she watched her mother twist in and out of the path of the assassin’s blows like a leaf in the wind. Now she understood that the Kestrel had never hated her, for this was what her mother’s hatred looked like, and it was bloodcurdling.

But his heart raced whenever he thought of the epic love the old stories spoke of. Love so strong people would cross oceans and face down gods just for the chance of it—that was what Malik wanted. But he was too anxious, too poor, too strange to ever have something like that, so wanting it would have to be enough.

Afua did not have the polished style of a griot, but she did have the excited energy of a child who hadn’t had anyone truly listen to her in a long time.

All Eshrans understood from birth that a sword to the neck felt the same whether deserved or not.

“She told me that the people we lose never truly leave, but that only we get to define how they stay.”

All at once, the world was too much and not enough, as if one wrong word might break it into a million tiny pieces.

Her mother was never coming back. Baba was never coming back. Hanane was never coming back. But she held within her all their love and their hopes and their dreams. She was neither a reflection of them nor a replacement, but rather everything they’d been, combined to form something completely new. Something more than she could have been on her own.

No one will ever sing songs about your physical prowess. But you are kind, Malik Hilali. Do not underestimate the strength it takes to be kind in a world as cruel as ours.”