Enclave

There were different kinds of strength. I knew that now. It didn't always come from a knife or a willingness to fight. Sometimes it came from endurance, where the well ran deep and quiet. Sometimes it came from compassion and forgiveness.

I never belonged anywhere until I met you.

I have your back. I didn't mean only when it's easy. All the time.

A good huntress respected her partners instincts, even if he was socially ignorant.

... Where did you go?” “Down below.” “Ugh,” she said. “I’ve heard they’re little better than animals.” Funny. I thought the same thing about most Topsiders I encountered. Tegan touched my hand in silent sympathy, and I set my jaw. ... I stepped forward and pasted on a false smile. We were in her home, after all. The least I could do was be polite. “I’m Deuce, animal from the underground.

You could miss someone, but it did no good to fixate on loss. I wished I had the ready words of a Breeder or the ability to comfort with a soft touch. I didn't. Instead I had daggers and determination. That would have to do.

He'd said the sun could burn me. It certainly looked angry enough, all orange and glowing mad.

We stood back-to-back, blocking and striking in harmony; sometimes it felt like his arms and legs were an extension of me. I could count on him to keep them off me from behind.

A huntress never stabbed anything she didn't want to.

A curve of silver hung amid the brighter specks; it looked to me like a curved dagger, pretty but deadly, as if it might slice the sky in two.

My heart shifted a little in my chest; it seemed to swell and beat against my bones until I couldn't hear.

Before he bent his head, I knew what he was going to do. Touch his lips to mine. Oh, and I wanted him to... I stilled, hardly daring to breathe. The old refrain of cant and shouldn't sank beneath the weight of new worlds like please and yes.

He was the heat of a fire and the sweetness of the moon I'd only just met.

My body was a machine, plain and simple. I worked it to stay strong; I fed it to keep it running.

Here in the enclave, one didn't prosper by demonstrating too much independent thought.

I admired Stalkers style. He was incredibly fast using two small blades strapped to the backs of his hands. Slash slash slash. Fighting him you wouldn’t die of one great wound but instead bleed out slowly surprised to find yourself weak and dying after a thousand cuts.

The whole world is like Whitewall's razors I burst out. It cuts us, and we bleed but there's no purpose to it.

He went in, lean and deadly, and ended the creature with a lightning-fast spike of his blade. It shrieked, likely altering the rest. The death call carried like a mournful song.

In the enclave, the strong and the physically perfect survived, but if you were strong, you protected the weak until they had an opportunity to grow into their own power.

And maybe what I meant when I said that about Deuce is I don't want to do without her.

There were different kinds of strength. I knew that now. It didn’t always come from a knife or a willingness to fight. Sometimes it came from endurance, where the well ran deep and quiet. Sometimes it came from compassion and forgiveness.

I lived in an enclave in which our oldest had seen twenty-five years. His face was withered, and his fingers shook when he attempted the smallest tasks. Some whispered it would be a kindness to kill him, but they meant they didn't want to see their futures written in his skin.

He bent his head and brushed my lips with his. His hair spilled against my forehead, sleek and startling. Shock held me immobile, shock—and something else. Part of me wanted to lean into him.

Nobody would ever be like Fade. That much, I knew.

I never felt beautiful unless I was fighting, and even then it was something that went beyond skin and bone into the kinetic joy of successive movements. Kick, thrust, slash. I never doubted Fade at my back. I never faltered.

I refused to show my fear. Lock it down, Huntress.

I think it says, 'Color will not fade.

A shiver ran through me. Freaks looked almost human -- and weren't. They had lesions on their skin, razor-sharp teeth, and claws instead of fingernails. I'd heard you could detect them by smell, though in the tunnels, that could be hard.