The Foxglove King (The Nightshade Crown #1)

by Hannah F. Whitten

It reminded her of herself. How she’d been Night-Sister-Lore and then poison-runner-Lore and now spy-Lore, each a persona she’d eased into, a different shell to wear. When she thought about what might be left when all that artifice was stripped away, she came up blank. Like all the things that made her were window dressings on an empty house. And though Bastian had never had to run, had been born into his cage instead of molting into different ones over and over, she thought he’d feel the same. That all his careful personas might hide an emptiness the same shape as hers. He’d weathered Gabe’s anger with what she’d thought was grace, let the other man’s barely leashed rage roll off his back. But maybe it wasn’t grace. Maybe Bastian held this memory just as closely as Gabe did, and maybe he felt like he deserved that anger. Lore didn’t know how to articulate any of that, though. Not in a way Gabriel would understand. Where Bastian struggled against his cage, Gabe clung to his own, wanting the walls to shape him, shoving himself inside to make boundaries he knew. He’d built himself into something he thought the world wanted, and though it chafed at him, Lore still envied it, just a bit. There was a reassurance in knowing exactly how you were going to be let down.