Muse of Nightmares (Strange the Dreamer, #2)

by Laini Taylor

Yesterday she’d discovered she had a grandchild, living—a grandchild who was half monster, yes, but the blood of her blood nonetheless. She hadn’t sorted out how to feel about it until the girl was dead. Now she knew: She wanted her. And it was too late.

“There’s the kind of guest who’s honored to be invited, and the kind who believes he’s bestowing honor by accepting.”

“Tools,” scoffed Calixte. “Tools are for people with nothing better to do than think things through and make sensible plans.”

Minya surfaced from the shallow place.

You’re a bitch and I hope you die no offense

“Lazlo,” she whispered, soft, at his side. “I’ve changed my mind. Don’t let me go.”

She whispered, “I love you,” and he was lost.

Many a choice is made in this way: by pretending it makes itself. And many a fate is decided by those who cannot decide.

“Put it on,” Skathis instructed, and Kora raised it to her brow to fit it in place. But the smith said, “No. On your throat.” Kora paused, confused. “What?” “Like a collar,” Skathis said.

Um ???

“Maybe not forever,” said Ruby, “but I’m in no hurry for her to wake up.”

Bitch me neither the fuck

“Korako took them. The goddess of secrets.”

WAIT HUH

Do you want to die, too? Too. What did it mean, that Minya had said “too”? She must have meant the Ellens: Do you want to die like them? But… it didn’t line up. The Godslayer hadn’t gotten there yet, or else how could they have escaped?

“Cannibalism doesn’t really fill you up, you see.”

hehe

She told Lazlo he didn’t have to stay. “Well, that’s a relief,” he said. “I was wondering when I’d get a break from the woman I love, who is the first and only person I’ve ever loved, and who I would happily sit beside under literally any circumstances forever.”

it had never occurred to her to wish for a man who’d love her enough to come back to her even when she was a biting ghost.

He pushed back from the table to stand, but before he could, Ruza’s hand closed on his. He still wasn’t looking at him, but he had caught his hand so he couldn’t walk away. Thyon stared at his fingers enclosed in Ruza’s as though they belonged to some stranger. He hardly even registered the feeling. It was too alien. No one had ever held his hand. Not that Ruza was holding his hand. He was only touching it. It was nothing. When he let go, though, and drew his hand away, Thyon felt its absence keenly.

How strange to hold her value on the palm of her own hand. Men have decided between them that this is what my body and labor are worth for life.

Find me. I am not free.

And a terrible clear-eyed certainty that his reckoning had finally come.

Bro if you sacrifice yourself imma be mad

They had a litany of them, in reverse order: Kiska Werran Rook Topaz Samoon Willow, and on.

Oh ???? This timeline is wild

If he hadn’t always been sure, now he was: He wanted to live. That didn’t mean he believed he deserved to, but he wanted to, so very much.

“Azareen. I wish…” He pitched forward, as though he were falling asleep. She caught him, but couldn’t hold him upright. Her arms were numb, and he was so heavy. She collapsed to the side, and he slumped down over her. “What?” she asked, desperate, with her shallowing breath. “My love,” she pleaded as his eyes went dull. “What do you wish?” But the time for wishing had passed. Eril-Fane died first, Azareen just after.

Wow okay

Time snapped back and it all played out again, precisely as it had before. The stinger, the blood, the dropped swords.

He hadn’t answered before, and he didn’t now. Again, as before, they died. Then it all reversed and happened again. Eril-Fane died with his wish unspoken on his lips, its irony bitter on his tongue. I wish we could start all over again. That was what he’d wanted to say to his wife. He meant start a new life—together. Instead it was death they would share. Again. And again. And again.

Nova couldn’t stop. There was nothing after this. So she just kept on killing him.

Jesus Christ

Skathis, so-called god of beasts, was breeding magical children to sell as slaves across dozens of worlds.

We might be at odds, hate each other, and desire each other’s destruction, but in our despair, we are lost in the same darkness, breathing the same air as we choke on our grief.

Eril-Fane and Azareen could have lived.

And one day a baby boy in the nursery manifested smith ability. Kora snatched him. She stole him, and sent him, in her eagle’s grip, through pierced space to a place far away where Skathis wouldn’t find him.

“They’ll kill us no matter what we do,” the little girl said. “And I’m going to take them with us.”

😬😬😬

Eril-Fane was alive. That was the story.

I am getting major fucking whiplash

Because Minya was gray, too.

😬😬😬

She looked around at all the people she loved—all of them right here, except Lazlo. “I love you,” she told them. Minya felt the tether melting away. In a panic, she reached out to grasp Sarai’s hand. But she couldn’t. It was only a shadow in the air.

Minya having stopped trying to murder everyone (at least for now),

lol

That was still early in the night, not long after Thyon Nero surprised them by saving Sarai.

he started to shake, besieged by the enormity of life and death, made real to him for the very first time.

help.”

Yeah that’s helpful bitch

Once upon a time there was a silence that dreamed of becoming a song, and then I found you, and now everything is music.

Just as Sarai realized, just as she reached, Nova leaned back. And fell.

oh

He noticed things like knuckles and eyelashes that he didn’t notice on other people, and sometimes he had to look away and pretend to be thinking of something else.

It wasn’t even an alternate version of his life. He hadn’t gone back in time and done everything differently to get to this place. It turned out that sometimes it’s enough to start doing things differently now.

just enough that Thyon’s shoulder came to rest against Ruza’s,

NOW KISS

“Wishes don’t just come true. They’re only the target you paint around what you want. You still have to hit the bull’s-eye yourself.”

they lost themselves in each other, the very same place they had each been found.

Fate must have been feeling sympathetic for all the time they’d lost. They made a son that night, though it would be some weeks before they knew it, and months before they met him and named him Lazlo—

But that’s another story. THE END (OR IS IT?)