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Fault has no place in the greater scheme of things, little one. Fault and guilt are as useless as apology once the deed is done. Once the action has been taken, all must endure what follows.
“Long or short, if you worry about every step of a journey, you will divide it endlessly into pieces, any one of which may defeat you. Look only to the end.”
Be now what you must be to succeed at the end of your journey, and when the end comes, you will find it is just another beginning.”
“Life is not a race to restore a past situation. Nor does one have to hurry to meet the future. Seeing how things change is what makes life interesting.”
To take what has happened to you and learn from it, instead of being trapped by it. Nothing is quite so destructive as pity, especially self-pity. No event in life is so terrible that one cannot rise above it.”
This terrible event—whatever it was—is over and done. Cling to it and let it shape you and you are doomed to live it forever. You are granting it power over you. Set it aside, and shape your future as you wish it to be, in spite of what happened to you. Then you have seized control of it.”
“I can’t go on pretending I don’t love you. I can’t pretend it doesn’t scare me spitless to see you in danger.”
🫠🫠🫠
“You say you can’t perform your duties without my respect. Don’t you know the same is true for me? Damn it, a man has to see himself reflected somewhere to be sure he is real. I see myself in your face, in how your eyes follow me when I’m handling something well, in how you grin at me when I’ve done something stupid but managed to make it come out all right anyway. When you take that away from me, when…”
His heart sank. His words came out as a plea. “Althea, I am so damn lonely. Worst is to know that whether we fail or succeed, I still lose you. Knowing that you are, every day, here on the same ship with me, and I cannot so much as share a meal with you, let alone touch your hand, is torment enough. When you will not look at me or speak to me…I can’t go on with this coldness between us. I can’t.”
When she held him, she held all those things within her. “Almost,” she breathed softly. “Almost, I thought we were flying.”
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Our strength comes from our diversity. Those of us who were made slaves have an intimate knowledge of the New Traders and their holdings. The New Traders hope to hold what they have taken with folk they have tattooed.
He had no eyes, he had no wings, but his soul was still a dragon’s soul.
I want you all the time, always at my side.”
found a breath. “But I’m not a boy anymore. Now this just drives me mad. I want more than this, Althea. I don’t want suspense and quarrels and jealousy. I don’t want sneaking about and concealing what I feel. I want the comfort of knowing you are mine, and taking pride in everyone else recognizing that as well. I want you in my bed beside me, every night, and across the table from me in the morning. I want to know that years from now, if I stand on another deck somewhere, on another night, you will still be beside me.”
We. She liked the sound of that.
Brashen leaned over to reach the brandy bottle. It was a pretense, to bring his leg into contact with hers. She felt the steady warm pressure of his knee against hers, and realized that he saw her dilemma. His brief glance spoke volumes.
I wish I could kick over every responsibility to my name and just be a pirate.”
Reading it after the ending hit different
Better she mourn her husband’s death, Althea thought grimly, than to mourn a long life with him.
Who loves you or who you love is not as significant as who you are. Too many folk, women and men, love the person they wish to be, as if by loving that person, or being loved by that person, they could attain the importance they long for.
How am I to learn to be a man, if I am never among men?
It is time the men of Bingtown remember that when we first came here, women and children risked just as much as their men did. We all fight today, Reyn. Better to die in battle than live as slaves after our men have died trying to protect us.”
Just another woman on her own. Mingsley was not to know that he had flung a blessing at Serilla in the tones of a curse.
Amber’s hair lifted slightly in the rising wind and she had spoken in a distant voice. “Danger cups us under its hand, and we can do nothing but stand witness to the turning of the world. Here we walk on the balancing line between futures. Humanity always believes it decides the fate of the whole world, and so it does, but never in the moment that it thinks it does. The future of thousands ripples like a serpent through the water, and the destiny of a ship becomes the destination of the world.”
but found Clef looking up at him. His brimming eyes were full of anguish as he protested, “I wouldena given up, sir. I’d a died f’you.” Brashen let his own weapon fall. He set a hand on the boy’s fair head. “I know. That was what I feared.”
our words shape our reality.
You will see the value of him long before others do, and know that the greatest trait he will carry is simply that he is himself. A child takes root in his parents’ acceptance. Your baby already has that gift from you.”
Silencing memories does not make them stop existing. Events cannot be undone by forgetting them.”
If she can fathom how to live, we will let her give us eyes again. A Paragon we shall be, but not Paragon of the Ludlucks. Paragon of the Dragons. Two made into one.”
“Such a storm of emotions as humans can evoke, all on the basis of imagination,” the dragon observed condescendingly. In a more reflective voice she asked, “Do you do this because you live such short lives? Tell yourselves wild tales of what might happen tomorrow, and feel all the feelings of events that will never happen? Perhaps to make up for the pasts you cannot recall, you invent futures that will not exist.”
you. I have been called a fool as often as I have been called a prophet.
Clef was bold enough to seize his wrist and tug at him. “Cap’n, don’t yer unnerstan’? She’s alive. Ya don’ need ter cry now.” He laughed suddenly, the sound as painful as a sob. “I know. I know. It’s just—” His words abandoned him. How could he explain to a boy the rush of feelings that accompanied the restoration of his world?
To defeat the monster, you became the monster.” The tiny voice became even fainter. “You have only yourself to fear now.”
how am I supposed to be a man if no one allows me to be one?”
How can you be made of death, when it was inheriting his life that quickened you?
The profound wrongness of that gripped Althea. It was not courage to surrender to that oblivion, conceding the world to those who had wronged them. Sudden shame swept her at her cowardly flight from life. Death could make things stop, but it could not make things right. She abruptly despised herself for surrendering to death while the one who had destroyed her life went on living, for embracing death if it meant leaving her ship in darkness.
Then pick up your true courage, ship, and follow me back into life.
The ship sailed blind, and yet not blind, for Amber’s eyes were his.
Kennit’s mother kept her place on the foredeck. The turning of her head, and her nods of approval as the crew moved to their tasks showed her familiarity with the ways of a ship. As Paragon began to move, she lifted her head and her veined hands ran along his forerail in the little pats of a proud mother on her son’s shoulders.
What one wants to believe badly enough becomes real.
“Love can exist without need,”
His face was beardless now, and youthful. It was more in keeping with his voice and with whom he felt himself to be, and yet it made him squirmingly curious to know he wore the face of someone Amber loved. She would not speak of him, but sometimes in the brushing touch of her fingers, he glimpsed the man she saw in her mind.
Why does he look like Fitz 🤔?
She perceived Vivacia’s confinement, spirit of a dragon encased in a body of wood, dependent on the men who set her sails and the winds that pushed her canvas. There were, she suddenly saw, many ways to be raped. The revelation broke her heart.
The look she gave him near broke his heart. “You never spoke out for me,” she accused him.
“Oh, no. Never that.” Althea tried to find words to express it. “In her lies my true freedom.” But did it? Those words had once been true, but Vivacia had changed. She and the ship no longer completed one another. A tiny traitor portion of her mind recalled her stolen day with Brashen in Divvytown. If he had lived, would she have been able to say such words? Did she cling to Vivacia because she was all that was left to her?
“Something hovers here, Kennit. Something even more powerful than the luck you worship.” She smiled but there was sadness in her expression. “Destiny knows no odds,” she added mysteriously.
It was the first thing he put on.
This genuinely broke my heart
“A liveship comes! A Bingtown ship comes to our aid!”
Screaminggggg
Captain. But you ought to tell the men who we’re fighting.” Brashen grinned, wild and reckless. “Anyone that gets between us and Althea!” A surprising bellow burst suddenly from Paragon. “But save Kennit for me!”
Heedless of the blood, she bent to embrace him. He was still warm. “Never to be,” she moaned, rocking. “Never to be.” It was like losing her home and her family all over again. In his arms, she suddenly knew, was the only place where she could have been Malta again. With him died her youth, her beauty, her dreams.
