The Dawn Chorus (The Bone Season, #3.5)

by Samantha Shannon

‘Get me that sedative, Warden, you miserable fucking ingrate, and I might consider those debts paid.’

She will chain you in the darkness, and she will drain the life and hope from you. Your screams will be her music.

‘I am here for as long as you want me with you, Paige Mahoney.’

‘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.’ Lightning illuminated his features, the blue making his eyes stand out. ‘Let the storm into you, Paige. Hold it inside. See yourself as a force of nature, vast enough to defeat a god, and carry that image for all of your days.’

yet there was passion in his voice – quiet, restrained, but present.

With him, I was no longer afraid.

‘Maybe I could have liked you. Maybe we could have been friends.’ It flowed out of me as if I had already dreamed it. ‘Maybe, if I was just me and dreamwalkers had never been hunted, I could have overheard you playing this old music and realised it was the same music I loved … and maybe we could have got talking about it over coffee. If we’d met in another world.’

But I know what it is to believe oneself broken, Paige. To feel the chains even in liberty.’

‘I confess myself unfamiliar with the sound of seagulls in their death throes.’