Strange the Dreamer (Strange the Dreamer, #1)

by Laini Taylor

He had a trio of fears that sat in his gut like swallowed teeth, and when he was too quiet with his own thoughts, they’d grind together to gnaw at him from within.

In the sheer, shimmering improbability of the moment, it seemed to Lazlo that his dream had tired of waiting and had simply . . . come to find him.

And that’s how you go on. You lay laughter over the dark parts. The more dark parts, the more you have to laugh. With defiance, with abandon, with hysteria, any way you can.

“Good morning, lovely,” said the ghost.

“Unkind,” said Ruza, wounded. His face crumpled. He pretended to weep. “I am fearsome,” he insisted. “I am.” “There, there,” Lazlo consoled. “You’re a very fierce warrior. Don’t cry. You’re terrifying.”

Hate had failed her, and it was like losing a shield in battle.

There was such a feeling here of . . . of sweetness, and safety, and Sarai wished . . . She wished it were real, and she could live in it.

Him 😭

Here was the radical notion that you might help someone simply because they needed it.

“You can’t keep drawing your own spirit. It might not kill you,” he said, because spirit wasn’t like blood, and somehow people went on living without it, if you could call it living. “But it will make you ugly,” he told him, “and I think that would be very hard for you.”

“Good people do all the things bad people do, Lazlo. It’s just that when they do them, they call it justice.”

Three fears had gnawed at Lazlo, back in his old life. The first: that he would never see proof of magic. The second: that he would never find out what had happened in Weep. Those fears were gone; proof and answers were unfolding minute by minute. And the third? That he would always be alone? He didn’t grasp it yet—at least not consciously—but he no longer was, and he had a whole new set of fears to discover: the ones that come with cherishing someone you’re very likely to lose.

“I only mean,” he rushed to explain, “if you’re afraid of your own dreams, you’re welcome here in mine.”

He held a goddess in his mind as one might cup a butterfly in one’s hands. Keeping it safe just long enough to set it free.