The Bone Shard Daughter (The Drowning Empire, #1)

by Andrea Stewart

One more life saved. It was a pittance, unutterably small against the scale of the lives lost. But it was there. And one life certainly made a difference to the one living it.

“Stop!” Waste of breath, that. Does anyone actually stop when they’re being chased? She’d just beaten me; what did she expect – for me to turn around and thank her for the kind request? No. I did what everyone else who’s ever been given that command does – I fled faster.

And that was the worst thing about this grief – not just knowing that she was gone, but knowing that eventually new memories and experiences would layer on top of them, making the distance between us ever wider. The days we’d spent swimming and fishing at the beach, the first time I’d kissed her, the dreams we’d shared – I was now the only keeper of these memories, and that was the truest sort of loneliness.

It felt like being embraced by walls. Every place in my room felt safe; there were no unknown corners.

Hers was the beauty of ospreys, of sea serpents, of a wave crashing against rocks.

“One foolish choice is like a rat you let go. It will spawn more consequences than you first thought possible.”

The young woman you were before – she’s still there, I’m sure of it.” He focused somewhere past my shoulder. And what was wrong with the young woman I was now?

All I had was who I was now.

No movement survives without a vision of the future, because without it, there is nothing to strive for.

But I never thought I could tell you what was in my heart, to share pain and disappointment and to have you cup that in your hands. To breathe back your own sorrows. I always thought you’d just make a joke or tell me a funny story about a fisherman who accidentally hooked the moon.”

But knowledge was meant to be shared, one generation to the next.

At first both parties were indifferent, but familiarity bred comfort and comfort bred closeness and the end result of all this was love.

Habits were things done with little reason, over and over, until momentum made them more difficult to stop than to keep going.

That was the problem with ruling a populace that didn’t love you. Few people cared when you got hurt.