Innate Magic (The Marrowbone Spells, #1)

by Shannon Fay

Ralph was tall and might have been handsome if life hadn’t happened to him:

She listened intently and, when I was done, told me that if I worked very hard, I might be able to lose my accent.

“Do you know where the word happy comes from?” “No, can’t say I do.” Thomas would’ve known. For a moment I wished he were here with me, picking up on the things I was missing. “It’s from the old English tales of King Arthur and his cohorts. It meant to be aligned with one’s destiny. A happy knight was not called that because he was joyful but because he was on the path he was meant to fulfil.”

One of them found an orange in a house in an abandoned French village while we were chasing after an enemy mage. Even though I’d warned the boys not to take anything he pocketed the orange, and later on when he peeled it his own skin peeled off in the same fashion.

Hollister shook his head. “I don’t know how anyone could have lived through any of the wars and call himself a pacifist.” “I don’t know how anyone could live through the wars and not,” I said.

We had both felt an instant rapport, and because we didn’t know any better, we mistook it for love.

If I focused on my breathing I could keep it at bay, like Zeus controlling the clouds in the sky or Poseidon pacing the rhythm of the waves.

“Many unhappy turns are born out of assumptions,”

Thomas believed that one of the best things that could happen in the United Kingdom would be to set up a guillotine at every subway station entrance and get a-chopping. The aristocracy was holding the nation back, landed gentry hoarding power rather than dispersing it amongst the people.