Aefe Quotes

Sometimes I hear the human’s voices. They ask me, Who are you? And I tell them, I am Aefe, Teirness of the House of Obsidian. I am Aefe. I am Aefe. I am Aefe. But the time rolls by. And when I have lost everything else that makes me who I am, what does a name mean, anyway? One day there is nothing left of my body. I am nothing but raw energy, and they force me into bodies and minds, they trap me in rooms of white and white and white. I am nothing but loss and anger and the overwhelming feeling that perhaps, long ago, I was something else. When I meet another human, and their gaze turns to me and asks, Who are you? Now I say, I am no one. And it is true.

I am not calm, Aefe.” He stepped closer, eyes burning, jaw tight. “I am on fire.

I love you, Aefe. I love you imperfectly, but completely.

I hope for the best,” he said. “But I suspect the worst.” He spoke so matter-of-factly. I stared at him, a wrinkle between my eyebrows. “How can you be so calm about all of this? If I were you…” There were no words for it. I would be drowning in my rage. Caduan’s face hardened. “What makes you think I’m calm?” I blinked, and when I opened my eyes, it all rearranged. I felt like a fool for not seeing it earlier. The stillness in Caduan was not calm. It was paralyzing rage. “I am not calm, Aefe.” He stepped closer, eyes burning, jaw tight. “I am on fire.

The American casualties continued to be staggering, in no small part because among the AEF’s junior officers enthusiasm generally outran their experience.

It was not until the Korean War was many months old that new Army trainees began to live half their time in the field, and to undergo a third of their training by night. Slowly, commanders then began to restore the old hard slap and dash that had characterized Grant’s men in Virginia, Pershing’s AEF, and Patton’s armored columns.

A tool. A compass. A key that leads to other things.” “What other things?” Ishqa was terrible at this. What was it about six-hundred-year life spans that made one so frustratingly bad at communication? “You are aware of how magic works,” he said. “That it is like rivers running beneath our world, different streams of different substances. Solarie magic, Valtain magic, and our Fey magic.” “And the deeper levels beneath them,” I added. Ishqa nodded. “Yes. The deep magic that is still connected to you, even if that connection had been severed and stitched over. The very same magic that your lover drew from, that… Reshaye drew from.” He rarely spoke of Reshaye—of Aefe—by name. He never seemed to know which term to use. “But,” he went on, “magic is far more complicated than those four levels. None of us know how many different streams lurk beneath the surface of our world, or what they are capable of. Even the extensive modifications that humans and Fey have done to tap into deeper streams merely allow us to reach a fraction of what exists. And for many years—millennia—the Fey had no interest in learning more about those powers. The humans, at least, always strove to innovate. We… thought such things were blasphemous and unnatural. That is, until Caduan took power. He saw how we could use magical innovations to strengthen our civilization and help our people—end hunger, cure illness, even advance art and music.

I was being carried. I was flying. “I have you.” Ishqa’s voice was steady and smooth in my ear. I choked out, “We have to go back for him.” Ishqa said, quietly, “He did not survive.” “We have to go back.” “Aefe… there is nothing to find.” Ishqa’s voice was pained. “Trust me.” I squeezed my eyes shut. I wanted to argue, wanted to force him to turn around, tear apart the world to search for Caduan. But I had felt that connection between us sever. I watched him fall.

Sareid was nothing less than visionary, Aefe. She had such dreams for what the House of Obsidian could be for so many people. I’d never— I still have never known anyone as…” Words seemed to elude him, and yet, his eyes had gone far away, as if so lost in memory that they seemed insignificant. “You…” I choked out. You loved her. I didn’t say it aloud, but we both heard it. Orin’s wince and pointed silence told me everything I needed to know. “Tell me why my father attacked Niraja.” I didn’t know why I asked. A part of me knew the answer, and dreaded hearing it. A part of me never wanted to hear it. “He attacked Niraja to bring Sareid back,” Orin said. My eyes were stinging. “That’s not true,” I said. “He attacked this place because it is corrupted. Because the blood is corrupted here.” Orin winced. “Aefe…

I thought of it more clearly than I had in so long, the memories sharper, as if drawn into focus by my anger and confusion. My father leaning over me, his hands on my throat. You are tainted, Aefe. What had the priestess seen in my blood that day? Just my curse? Or did she also see my lineage? What would it have meant to my father, if the heir to the House of Obsidian had not been his blood daughter?

Orin’s face was oddly vulnerable, almost pleading. “I’m telling you this because you are the Teirness of the House of Obsidian. And you have the power to change things, Aefe. You can do what your mother couldn’t. You could build a better world for people who share your blood—” Share my blood. And it was those words, at last, that snapped something within me. Orin came a step too close, and I snarled at him. “Get away from me.” “Aefe—” This man was a stranger. He knew nothing about me. He cornered me to tell me these things and then used them to manipulate me into doing what was best for his kingdom.

I still felt something, whenever I looked at Ishqa—something with a razored edge. Ishqa said, quietly, “But there are still pieces of her hatred for me in you.” Her. It. Reshaye. Aefe. I didn’t answer. “It was my greatest mistake,” he said. “I can say this a million times over, and it would not be enough. Perhaps the loss of my son is punishment for what I did then.” A single crack in his calm expression revealed a hint of pain. Such a human, recognizable thing. He spoke as if his son was dead. He wasn’t—though he had been close to it, in Nura’s captivity. He had been rescued by the Fey king’s forces and remained loyal to King Caduan. Ishqa rarely spoke of it. Only now did I glimpse what he must be feeling, knowing that his son probably thought he was a traitor. To him, his son was just as unreachable as Max was in Ilyzath.

Aefe was there.” My brows contorted in confusion. “What do you mean, she was there?” Aefe was dead. Aefe had become Reshaye. We knew that Caduan had Reshaye in his possession—but Reshaye was a very different being than the Fey woman it used to be. “I mean what I say,” Ishqa said. “Aefe was there. Aefe, just as she looked five hundred years ago.” “In a… body?” “Not just a body. Her body.” “That’s impossible,” Sammerin said. “No one can be brought back from the dead.” “She was never truly dead,” Ishqa said. “A part of her lived as Reshaye.” Perhaps more of her was in Reshaye than I ever realized. I relived those terrible moments again—the moments when my mind, Max’s, and the Fey king’s were interlocked. I had felt Reshaye inside of me then, being dragged back into this world. I knew it was possible he had taken it successfully. Ishqa and I had discussed this at length. But I had never considered the possibility that the Fey king would want it for something more than to be a weapon in his own mind, as it had been a weapon in mine. “Still. It’s still impossible.” Sammerin shook his head, looking offended that something so outlandish had even been brought up. “Do you have any idea how much a human—or Fey—body consists of? The sheer intricacy of tissues and bones and nerves? No one can create a living thing from nothing, let alone one that complex.

don’t need to wait,” my father said, smoothly. “Klein, my master of war, will join Admiral Iajqa in the development of the military. And my daughter, Aefe of the Sidnee Blades, will represent the House of Obsidian on the scouting journey.

Caduan’s voice came from behind me. “Perhaps it’s easier for you to hate what you know than to hate what we just saw. But we don’t have time for you to make yourself feel better by tearing apart a false enemy. Aefe’s magic is the only reason she and Ishqa made it out of there alive. And who would have saved them if she didn’t have it? The gods?

Why?” I choked out. “Why would they do that?” “And how?” Siobhan said. “A whole House? All at once?” Caduan shook his head, still not looking away from the corpse. “I do not know.” “Perhaps it’s weaponry,” I said. “A way to kill them all, quickly.” “I know very well that they do not need to do this to kill. No. I think whatever this was, it was a failure.” He lifted his knife, pointing to the exposed innards of the body. “Even just over the last several hours, all of this has degraded. Her body is withering away as we speak. Her own blood is poisoning her. We didn’t kill this one. I found her beyond the walls, untouched by the fires. Likely drowned in her own dissolved organs. Slowly.” His voice was calm and level, but his knuckles were white around the handle of his blade. “I do not think,” he said, “that this is what the humans wanted to happen. I think that this is a failed experiment. They weren’t trying to destroy. They were trying to create. And what we are looking at now is a Fey caught in-between. Just as Aefe was caught in-between, last night.” His eyes flicked up to mine, bright and furious. “The land itself was corrupted, there. Don’t tell me that you did not feel it as I did.

General Pershing now had what he wanted: proof that the AEF was the equal of its allies and the enemy. British generals, however, were less than awed by the American success at Saint-Mihiel. Since the Germans had intended to abandon the salient anyway, the Yanks, as one Briton put it, had not so much defeated the Germans as relieved them.

For the entire AEF, the campaigns at Cantigny, Belleau Wood, Château-Thierry, and the Ourcq started to approach the bloodletting of past western front battles, with 67,000 men fallen.

The pandemic may have originated in the American military post at Fort Riley, Kansas, where a dust storm whipping about tons of incinerated manure had sent hundreds of coughing, stumbling doughboys diagnosed with influenza into the post hospital, where many died. Soon after, American troopships disembarked at Brest and Saint-Nazaire, and French poilus began to fall ill, then British soldiers. Then, as the malady rolled across France, German troops were stricken. The fatality rate was appalling. In the AEF, roughly one out of every three soldiers with influenza died, far worse odds than a man faced in battle.

Orin winced. “Aefe…” I lurched back. “Why do you know my name?

Life is as YOU see it

July the incidence of influenza in the AEF had reached its lowest point since early spring. Only 99 men died of flu and pneumonia that month, and the number was expected to be even lower

The stillness in Caduan was not calm. It was paralyzing rage. “I am not calm, Aefe.” He stepped closer, eyes burning, jaw tight. “I am on fire.

If we die tomorrow, it was an honor to fight next to you, Ishqa.” He was silent for a long moment. Then he said, “Likewise, Aefe, Teirness of the House of Obsidian. It has been an honor.

I do not remember,” I said, quietly. “I do not remember any of it.” His gaze softened. “I know.” “Perhaps you are looking for Aefe. Perhaps she no longer exists.” Another change in that stare, one that I did not have the language to understand. “Perhaps,” he said. “But I am happy to have you here, nonetheless.” Strange, I thought. I did not know how to describe the sensation in my chest. It was uncomfortable. Everything was uncomfortable. “Even if I am only Reshaye?” I said. Caduan’s hand fell over mine. This time, I did not pull away. “Even then,” he said.

Likewise, Aefe, Teirness of the House of Obsidian. It has been an honor.