stevie’s Reviews > Bright Smoke, Cold Fire > Status Update

Juliet looked her in the eyes. “I will never forgive you,” she said, her voice calm and absolutely certain. “I will never forgive you. I swear by my soul that no Juliet will ever forgive you.”

To treat Juliet as something bought and sold and bargained for—
That was wrong. That was obscene.
She could not kill this girl who had infinity behind her eyes, and that meant she could not kill anyone, because the capacity to comprehend the infinite lay in all people.

We live as those already dead, said Juliet silently.

“I think Romeo was better than any of us,” said Juliet. “He would care about anyone. Mahyanai, Catresou, Old Viyaran, it didn’t matter. He wept for me. He smiled for me. He thought I should have a name. You, who have always had one, cannot understand what that meant.”

Then I met Juliet, and I cared about her more than anything. And she cared about everyone, all of the city, even though none of them cared the least bit about her.” He paused. “I don’t think she ever realized just how selfish I was. I’m not sure she could have loved me if she had. But that’s why I have to do this. For Juliet, and for her city, and so I can be a little worthy of her before I die.”

“I know what they were doing with the Juliet,” said Justiran. “They wanted a key to the gates of death.”

“Even those raised body and soul by necromancers are pitiful, ruined things. Nobody comes back whole from death. There was a time when nobody came back at all, but the world is broken now, and we are running out the cracks.”

“Like a river, the particles are ever-moving, ever-changing; we are the ripples in the river, that vanish in a moment and never return. But while we are here, we are like dust motes caught in the afternoon sunlight, dazzling before we fall into the darkness.”

He is folly and sin and everything she should not want, and yet in his eyes she has a name, as she can never have among her people. With him, she is only a girl, and he is only a boy, and that is enough. In this fragile, fleeting moment, it is enough.