Kate Quinn

e lingered inside our fragile bubble of happiness, the kind of happiness that sits on top of melancholy as easily as icing on a cake.

Not everybody looked at a rose and got entranced not by the scent but by the pattern of it, the way the petals overlapped like stairs winding inward . . . inward . . .

Are not there little chapters in everybody’s life, Beth had read in Vanity Fair only that morning, that seem to be nothing, and yet affect all the rest of history?

“‘The greatest tyrants over women are women,’”

There’s always an after

It’s not a game.” Beth had never contradicted a superior in her life, but in this cozy library overlooking a tangled garden, none of the ordinary rules seemed to apply. “It’s war.”

Marry for friendship, not love,” Osla had heard her mother quip. “Friends listen better than lovers!”

Beth nodded, chewing a thumbnail, her mind still tumbling among the blocks of Enigma. Was there ever anything more aptly named . . .

He was a puzzle, all right; her very own enigma in a park full of them.

That was when she decided she was done being Mabel. Mabel was young and dim and easily fooled. She was going to be Mab instead. Cool, imperious, untouchable Queen Mab.