Ava Reid

Only twenty-one. That’s so sad, isn’t it?”
“Why is it sad?”
“Because,” she said, “what do you do when you’re twenty-one and you’ve already achieved everything that most people can only dream of? You have the rest of your life in front of you, but nowhere else to go.”

More likely because my people have prohibitions against inking your skin. But there’s hardly anything in life worth doing that doesn’t make somebody angry.

I would smile blithely if someone tried to saw off my leg. But no one had ever told me that I was allowed to scream

If there was power in keeping a secret, surely there was power in revealing it too

our nearest neighbors were so vexed by the noise that they threatened to call the Grand Inspector on us. Papa, in turn, threatened to turn them into shrubs.

Because,” she said, “what do you do when you’re twenty-one and
you’ve already achieved everything that most people can only

dream of? You have the rest of your life in front of you, but nowhere else to go.”

For James

This is a love story

There was an intimacy to all violence, she supposed. The better you knew someone, the more terribly you could hurt them

What is a mermaid but a woman half-drowned,

What a selkie but an unwilling wife,

What a tale but a sea-net, snatching up both

From the gentle tumult of dark waves?