Across the Green Grass Fields (Wayward Children, #6)

by Seanan McGuire

The day before, she’d known who she was and what her world was going to be; she’d been so sure life had no surprises in store for her.

Maybe she would have realized staying quiet wasn’t the same thing as lying, and that while her body wasn’t any sort of shameful secret, she was under no obligation to share it with anyone, especially not with a girl who had proven, over and over again, that she couldn’t be trusted with anything that didn’t fit her narrow view of the world. Maybe she would have realized that if there was no right way to be a girl, there was no wrong way either.

There’s nothing wrong with being limited, as long as you have people around to make sure those limitations don’t get you hurt. Or drenched.”

together in a world that was better when not experienced in isolation. Anything with enough brain to know itself as an individual will reach out to others, looking for companionship, looking for other eyes with which to see the world.

Laurel’s words had been enough to hurt her before, when she’d thought the world she knew was all there was. She knew better now. The world was bigger now. She was bigger now, and that made all the difference.

anyone who answered a friend’s honesty with horror and rejection had never been a friend in the first place.

She still didn’t believe in destiny. Clay shaped into a cup was not always destined to become a drinking vessel; it was simply shaped by someone too large to be resisted. She was not clay, but she had been shaped by her circumstances all the same, not directed by any destiny.

“I’m not killing anyone. I don’t want to be a hero. I was willing to save the Hooflands from a wicked queen if there was no one else to do the job, but I’m not willing to kill a man, not even a bad man. Destiny doesn’t exist. You got it wrong. Everyone here got it wrong.”

We’re all people here. We all get to have the same chance to save the world.”