“She’d survived the Drowned Cities because she wasn’t anything like Mouse. When the bullets started flying and warlords started making examples of peacekeeper collaborators, Mahlia had kept her head down, instead of standing up like Mouse. She’d looked out for herself, first. And because of that, she’d survived.”

“Mahlia… understood Doctor Mahfouz and his blind rush into the village. He wasn’t trying to change them. He wasn’t trying to save anyone. He was just trying to not be part of the sickness. Mahlia had thought he was stupid for walking straight into death, but now, as she lay against the pillar, she saw it differently. She thought she’d been surviving. She thought that she’d been fighting for herself. But all she’d done was create more killing, and in the end it had all led to this moment, where they bargained with a demon … not for their lives, but for their souls” (p. 403)”

“You call me castoff,” Mahlia said, “Chinese throwaway, whatever.” Amaya was trying to look away, but Mahlia had her pinned, kept her eye to eye. “My old man might have been peacekeeper, but my mom was pure Drowned Cities. You want to war like that, I’m all in.” Mahlia lifted the scarred stump of her right hand, shoved it up in Amaya’s face. “Maybe I cut you the way the Army of God cut me. See how you do with just a lucky left. How’d you like that?”

“No one else could see all the bodies she’d left behind, but they were there, looking at her. Or maybe that was just her, looking at herself, and not liking what she saw. Knowing she could never escape her own judging gaze.”

“Running. She was always running. Like a rabbit chased by coywolv. Always hunting for some new safe bolt hole, and every time, the soldier boys found her, and forced her to rabbit again. The doctor was wrong. There was no place to hide, and she’d never be safe as long as she remained close to the Drowned Cities.”

“Her father would return from China. He’d come back with all his soldiers. He’d pick her up in his strong arms and say that he’d never meant to leave, that he hadn’t meant to sail away and leave her and her mother alone in the canals of the Drowned Cities as the Army of God and the UPF and the Freedom Militia came down like a hammer on every single person who’d ever trafficked with the peacekeepers. A stupid little dream for a stupid little war maggot. Mahlia hated herself for dreaming it. But sometimes she curled in on herself and held the stump of her right hand to her chest and pretended that none of it had happened. That her father was still here, and she still had a hand, and everything was going to get better.”

“She’d been so busy worrying about soldier boys and villagers she’d forgotten the jungle had hunters of its own, and now she was going to die for it.”