The Dawn Chorus (The Bone Season, #3.5)

by Samantha Shannon

‘Perhaps folly is catching, Paige Mahoney.’

‘You know, for this … ancient being of the eternal twilight, or whatever, you’re naïve to the point of being absurd.’

‘Is it not ill-mannered to ask to read a private journal, Paige?’ ‘As we’ve long established, I don’t like you. I don’t care if you think I’m ill-mannered.’

I needed to fade. Not to die, not to disappear altogether – just to soften, so the world stopped catching on my sharp corners. So I didn’t feel it when it scraped me. I ached for the comfort of absence. I longed to exist less severely.

‘Scion calls us unnatural,’ I murmured, ‘and sometimes, when it hurts to use the part of me that makes me different … I wonder. If it was always a curse. Never a gift.’

‘Listen,’ he said. ‘To the storm. It has the potential to destroy. It is neither quiet, nor gentle, nor soft. That does not make it unnatural.’