The Foxglove King (The Nightshade Crown #1)

by Hannah F. Whitten

men generally preferred you to be a set piece in the story they made up, rather than an active player.

Mortem was dormant in everyone—the essence of death, the power born of entropy, just waiting to flood your body on the day it failed—but the only way to use it, to bend it to your will, was to nearly die.

In their twenty-fourth year of mortal life, the gods ascended: Apollius to the rulership of life and the day, Nyxara to rulership of death and the night, Hestraon to rulership of fire, Lereal to rulership of the air, Braxtos to rulership of the earth, and Caeliar to rulership of the sea.

“A foxglove for a foxglove.” Bastian handed it to her with a bow and a flourish. “Beautiful and poisonous. Much like yourself, if I may be so bold as to make an assessment after our brief acquaintance.”

“I feel like hoping Nyxara’s afterlife isn’t terrible might be some kind of blasphemy.” “If grace is blasphemous, build me a pyre.”

“Are you so accustomed to being used that you don’t realize when it’s happening, as long as it’s done kindly?”

They’ll force you to be stronger, and then break you down. Reduce you to nothing but a womb for magic they can’t make. But only if you let them. Even when you ascend, you must remember that you are wholly your own.

The past will always have its last word.

The bonds of family are sacred, but they are not always bound in blood.