A Far Wilder Magic

by Allison Saft

Alchemy is neither progress nor salvation. It’s the stench of sulfur she can’t scrub out of her hair. It’s packed suitcases and locked doors. It’s blood and ink on the floorboards.

At the core of each of us, one of his first teachers said, there is a spark of divine fire.

No one knows how to hurt you if you always play the fool. No one can truly be disappointed in you if they don’t expect any better.

Weston Winters is as good as having a second, less well-behaved dog.

“The One was All, and All was the One, and All was within the One,”

Girls like her don’t get to dream. Girls like her get to survive. Most days, that’s enough. Today, she doesn’t think it is.

All is One and One is All is the fundamental tenet of alchemy. It’s always been an ethical code for him. To help one person is to help better the entire world.

How many times will she watch someone leave this place and never look back, while she is left here like a ghost to haunt it?

Here in the echoing dark of the manor, there are ghosts all around her, ones she can only half see. Being left alone with them again is more than she can bear right now.

Misfortune has hardened them both. It’s roughened her, but it’s polished him to a sheen. If he lets the world believe he is all surface, then there is nothing to expose.

tikkun olam, the repair of the world.

“Besides, dreams don’t always have to be practical. That’s why they’re dreams. And now ours live and die together.”

Their fates are bound, but what frightens her more are the feelings he instills in her—this tentative hope and horrible yearning. It’s too much like standing with the toes of her boots off the edge of a cliff.

What lies beneath her is as dark and inconstant as the sea, and if she lets herself surrender, Margaret doesn’t know if anyone will be there to catch her.

Margaret knows he wants to understand, but how can she explain the ways her mind protects her from things no one else can see?

“Don’t tell me you’re worried about the fate of my immortal soul, too.” “I’m not. Only your mortal self.”

Weston Carroll Francis Xavier Winters.”

saints are regular people who’ve done something impressive enough to be canonized. Usually that means dying in some dramatic, grisly way when someone tries to get you to convert. Although I hear there’s a dog saint that has a cult following.”

bun. Clouds pass over the sun the moment she meets his gaze, the gold draining from her eyes as they narrow. Like this, she looks more wolf than girl—like some magic far wilder than alchemy runs through her.

Even though she knows she never will be, she wants to be something more than her grief and fear.

She has hidden behind too many locked doors to know how to open them anymore.

Margaret feels no guilt for needling him. No one ever granted her the luxury of preserving her feelings.

Love is not the sharp-edged thing she’s always believed it to be. It’s not like the sea, liable to slip through her fingers if she holds on too tight. It’s not a currency, something to be earned or denied or bartered for.

Love can be steadfast. It can be certain and safe, or as wild as an open flame. It’s a slice of buttered bread at a dinner table. It’s a grudge born of worry. It’s broken skin pulled over swelling knuckles.

There are few people, if any, in this world worth chasing after. Even fewer worth making yourself miserable over.

Her eyes brim with tears. Four sisters have inoculated him well against this. The kind of tears that come from wanting to be absolved, not from wanting to make amends.

There are punishments far worse than being struck. To be forsaken and unloved—that is the worst fate of all.

“I’ve been there, but I find women tend to like you better if you recognize they make their own decisions.”

All her life, love has been a scarce and precious resource, something earned or denied, something she starved for every day. But with Wes, love is different. It is reckless and inexhaustible. It is freely given. It simply is.

Maybe all of them have another self, one that waits unseen like the far side of the moon.

did you always love the memory of him more than you loved the reality of me?”

All I know for sure is that if God or the truth or whatever you want to call it is out there and we can reach it, we’re not going to find it in that box. We’ll find it in other people.”

If there is a God, then I think we can find him in the way we care about one another - Rhythm of War, Brandon Sanderson