The Magician’s Daughter

by H.G. Parry

“Death isn’t a habit you develop, you know, like tobacco or whiskey. It only takes once.”

It came to Biddy that Morgaine was a good deal like her sitting room—luminous, beautiful, but the beauty was cultivated with the precision of a glass cutter or a watchmaker, and the luminosity was designed to conceal more than it revealed.

not meaning to do something wasn’t the same as being sorry for doing it.

It was just that a wild creature pursued by a predator that would never stop sooner or later has to either turn and fight or die of fear.

If you’re out in the world for any length of time, there are going to be people who will accuse you of using sex as a weapon just because they’re afraid it would work on them if you did. It is a weapon, if you want to use it. But it isn’t the best or the only one you have, and you shouldn’t ever let them make you feel it is.”