A Day of Fallen Night (The Roots of Chaos #0.1)

by Samantha Shannon

This was where her skeleton would rest. She stood in her own mausoleum.

‘I am Fýredel.’

‘Because you would not believe until you saw.’ ‘Is that so terrible?’

Esbar came to life in her arms. She kissed back with frustration and love, whispering her name. Breathing hard, they stripped each other, not waiting to reach the bed.

Tunuva pressed Esbar to the wall.

Tunuva mounted Esbar, so they faced one another, and looked her in the eyes.

She wanted to make love, slow and tender, and she wanted to be seized in passion – two sacred wants, as pressing as thirst, as radiant as the fruit.

Tunuva stroked a hand between her thighs, stowing her fingertips there, in the warmth of her. She was sleek as a river. Tunuva found the sweet place where she most loved to be touched. Esbar arched her hips, and Tunuva slid deeper, their noses brushing as they closened.

‘We face the world together.’ Tunuva kissed her, sealing the promise. ‘Be safe, my love.’

On every battlefield, there are warriors and ravens – the warriors on the snow, the ravens waiting in the trees.

‘Its holder is bound to nurture the land and join its people, as rivers do.’

‘Lie with me,’ he said again, firmer. ‘Let it be me. Make this one choice for yourself.

And something in him had always called to something in her.

She had thought it would feel too heavy on her shoulders, but it made her feel stronger, to bear its weight.

‘All of us must be warriors now.’

What is the world, Dumai asked her, but a fleeting dream, from which we will all one day wake?

‘I know better than anyone that we don’t choose who we desire.’

‘My mother told me we are all like roses. I always thought it means that we opened our petals, took our true form, and gradually withered. But perhaps we never stop growing. If women are flowers, we are not roses, but day’s eyes – blooming not once, but over and over, each time the light touches us.’

Inys is my duty, but Hróth is my heart.’

She wished she could armour him, as he was trying to protect her.

It troubled her that sinning had seemed like the only right choice.

‘I would step away, Princess,’ Nikeya said.

What you see is the death of one age, the birth of another. Those who survive will build a new world from the ash of the old.’

‘We will all be stories one day, and I’d want someone to believe we existed.

‘Where you go, I go, Princess.’

‘A kite can’t fly with a weight on its line.’

‘Such is politics.’ Marian shook her head. ‘A circle with no end. A game with no victors.’

‘Why would the Saint want any of this?’ ‘A test of faith.’ ‘Only a cruel man would test you so.’

‘Your grief will always stay with you,’ her father told her, ‘but you will grow stronger to bear it.

You will never be alone, even if the world is bleak.

She was more beautiful than ever in the cold, with a flush in her cheeks, eyes warmed by the sun.

Dumai touched her wrist – and it was all of it, all of her,

and then Nikeya kissed her, soft as the first rain of spring, washing the rest of the world away.

Nikeya drew back to whisper her name. Dumai breathed her in,

Kuposa pa Nikeya had made her world so bright it hurt.

Without caution, without fear, courage is but folly by another name.

A warrior who means to win knows when to save their strength.’

After all these years, she had come searching for him, as he had always dreamed she might.

Some people need to call others evil, so they can seem pure and righteous in comparison, or to purge contempt they hold in secret for themselves.

Truer words have never been spoken

‘Thrit?’ Wulf said, only for Thrit to take him by the jaw and kiss him.

Wulf glimpsed a sweet and unexpected future, far away.

‘I have not lost the game. I simply withdraw from it.’

burbling

someone will remember us I say even in another time – Sappho

This was a dream within a nightmare.

By now she was so tired she could hardly keep her eyes open.

Me rn

‘Dumai,’ Nikeya whispered. ‘I found you.’

‘You can look at me,’ Nikeya said softly. ‘I want you to.’ ‘I am looking at you.’

‘Our world floats on secrets, as I told you once. I want you to know all of mine.’

‘I will think of having you in my arms every night.’