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Fate is a story people tell themselves so they can believe everything happens for a reason, that the whole awful world is fitted together like some perfect machine, with blood for oil and bones for brass. That every child locked in her cellar or girl chained to her loom is in her right and proper place.
“Surely trust is never truly broken, but merely lost.” Beatrice’s lips twist. “And what is lost, that can’t be found?”
During her daylight visits to New Cairo she’s felt noticed, perhaps a little out of place, but she’s never felt so thoroughly foreign. She wonders if this is how Quinn feels on the north end, as if her skin has transformed into an unreliable map, bound to lead people to all sorts of wrong conclusions.
It occurs to Beatrice for the first time that there’s a certain power in being nothing; she thinks of that old tale where the clever Crone tells a man her name is Nobody, and when asked who cursed him the man cries, “Nobody!” while the witch escapes.
But she should have known no man ever loved a woman’s strength—they only love the place where it runs out. They love a strong will finally broken, a straight spine bent.
She’s given up on hope, but she can’t seem to leave the habit of waiting behind.
She is a woman who understands the value of words, especially the ones they don’t want you to say.
The trick to being nothing is to want nothing.
What a novel, rather appealing arrangement, to own a man rather than being owned by him.
“The Constitution? What, exactly, do you think the Constitution is? A magic spell? A dragon, perhaps, that will swoop down to defend you in your most desperate hour?” Cleo straightens in her seat. Juniper doesn’t think she’s ever seen a face so full of scorn. “I assure you it has only ever been a piece of paper, and it has only ever applied to a very few persons.”
“In the stories, it’s generally best to do whatever the hell the talking animal tells you.”
“Chosen? If you three were chosen, it was by circumstance. By your own need. That’s all magic is, really: the space between what you have and what you need.”
Distantly it occurs to her that men like Gideon ought to stop breaking people, because sometimes they mend twice as strong.
One witch you can laugh at. Three you can burn. But what do you do with a hundred? Most people run, it turns out.
Or maybe dying for someone else is just worth more than living for yourself.
She begins to believe that the words and ways are whichever ones a woman has, and that a witch is merely a woman who needs more than she has.
