Sangu Mandanna

“That's how I feel every single day," he say brokenly. "Every day, Eva. Your life is dangling by a thread. And I'm scrabbling to hold on, but it keeps slipping through my fingers.I'm here because I can't stand not to be. It's not some big noble sacrifice. I want to be here. I don't like the world without you. I need you to be alive.”

“If Sean's voice is layers of wood, and Mina Ma's is the voice a copper pot, then Mathew Mercer's is the voice of a wild animal. I suddenly think of a movie Ammara and I loved when we were little, and I think of Scar, the lion who murdered his brother to become king. That kind of voice.”

“You have to be a two people; a saint and a sinner”

“If you expect the worse, you're only denying someone a chance to be better”

“What is this power the dead have over the ones they leave behind? It's strange and beautiful and frightening, this deathless love that human being continue to feel for the ones they've lost.”

“You,” he says, before the door closes all the way. “I often dream of you.”

“I’d rather spend the rest of my life without ever seeing you again,” he says, “than watch them destroy you because of me.” His hand slips to the back of my neck, skimming over my Mark, and stops in my hair. He leans down and kisses my forehead. I long to reach up, close my fingers over his arm, keep him here. He pulls away but not by much. His mouth lingers on my forehead and then, as if with an effort, he straightens.“Want him,” he says, his face hidden in shadow, “not me. He’d love you more than I could.”Then he leaves me alone.”

“Just last year, I had to read the old Indian epic, the Mahabharata. Inspired by it, I wished I had been named Draupadi. After all, she, too, had been born differently, even abnormally. She had stepped out of fire, a gift from the old gods to her father the king. There had been no Hindu gods involved in my birth, but the loose parallels gave me a delightful sense of grandeur.”

“You exist by the Weavers' grace. Only as long as you are what they expect of you. Do not understand how fragile that is? But if you replace your other, you might be safe. You might make your familiars happy, and then they will always keep you. So if only for my sake, child, hope that happens.""I don't wish for her to die!""Then I will wish it," she replies ruthlessly.”

“But maybe that's what the dead do. They stay. They linger. Benign and sweet and painful. They don't need us. They echo all by themselves.”