amaya’s Reviews > The Familiar > Status Update

The song spilled through her one last time, splitting, changing, tearing open the world.
A change of scene. A change of fortune.

There are different kinds of suffering, Valentina thought. The kind that takes you by surprise and the kind you live with so long, you stop noticing it.

I’m here, she wanted to shout. I’m so sorry. I only wanted a little warmth. I didn’t know what kind of fire I would start.

"Why!" he said. "Why sentence yourself to death?"
"Do you want to argue or do you want to kiss me?"
He closed the space between them in two strides and took her in his arms. "I assure you I am capable of both."
Why had she wasted time doubting him? He was a killer. He was a liar. He was not a good man. But it was possible she didn't want a good man.

"Your luck brought me Luzia Cotado. If the king will not use her as the instrument she was meant to be, I will."
There was the truth that had choked him in the scorpion's den.
He had doomed her before they had ever met.

"Fate can be changed," Luzia said. "Curses can be broken."
She had to believe that, or she would sink beneath the waves.

But what real solace could any answers from Lucrecia provide?
Santángel had been using her. Santángel had cared for her. Both things could be true and still mean nothing. ... A cruel calculation, a single efficient blade she could cut herself with every night. You are not worth saving, Luzia Cotado, Luzia Cana, Luzia Calderón. Luzia whose name would vanish in the ashes.

She could put her body back together as she had restored her tongue, but the question twisted and wriggled inside her: Who will carry me?
The answer had to be no one, as it had been for so long.

"I was already scared," Luzia said. But it was hard not to think of those marks, of what it would mean to cry out and not be heard, and to know all the while that none of it made a difference because she was going to be put to death anyway. There would be no pardon, no gentler punishment.

This was the magic that was good for boards and beans and eggs and heads of garlic, but that made spiders out of copper and hornets out of silver. Because magic was never easy; because food was food, but coins were nothing without the greed of men.