Threads That Bind (Threads That Bind, #1)

by Kika Hatzopoulou

All these people like her, the other-born and the immigrants and the lower-class who no one would hire, they didn’t let

the good get stolen from them, did they? It got nicked little by little, every time they were fired with no back pay, or their apartment application was denied for no reason, or they got looks of suspicion on the trolley. To assume they let it happen was to make them responsible for a system that was rotten long before they ever came along.

She had a way with shame, her sister. If patience was Io’s weapon, shaming was Thais’s. She brandished it sparingly, but always made sure to cut deep. Right into Io’s core, where the shame festered and infected her every thought.

Now Io knew how to recognize a bully. Thais had been one.

“You might survive,” Io told Edei, “but tolerating wickedness seems to me just a slow kind of death.”

About tolerating violence being a violence in itself.”

“I think the people we love can be

cruel. Our love doesn’t absolve them. Nor should it.” “What kind of person are you,” Edei whispered, “if you love someone who is cruel?” It was a question Io had often asked herself. She opened her mouth, closed it. Tried again. “You’re someone who loves. That’s it. That’s the only part that’s yours to give and yours to take.”

It was true: she had wronged and hurt and been hurt in return. But that didn’t make her ugly or worthy of this noxious punishment. Things weren’t really that uncomplicated. Black and white, crime and death, love and hatred. There were gradients, Io had realized. Endless shades of gray.

“Come on, then,” the mob queen said. “Let’s bring down the gods.”