Bookstream Bookwrap - Kushiel's Dart by Jacqueline Carey

From Kushiel's Dart

She will sell me to this cruel old woman, I thought, and experienced a thrill of terror. My mother stood with my hand in hers and gazed down at my upturned face. It is my last memory of her, those great, dark, lambent eyes searching my own, coming at last to rest upon the left. Through our joined hands, I felt the shudder she repressed.

It is hard for me, even now, to resent my parents, although I envy them, their naivete. No one even told them, when I was born, that they gifted me with an ill-luck name. Phèdre, they called me, neither one knowing that it is a Hellene name, and cursed.

And like a curse, that I was flawed. To be sure, it was my eyes; and not even the pair of them, but merely the one.

Such a small thing, on which to hinge such a fate. Nothing more than a mote, a fleck, a mere speck of color. If it had been any other hue, perhaps, it would have been a different story. My eyes, when they had settled, were that color the poets called bistre, a deep and luscious darkness, like a forest pool under the shade of ancient oaks. Bistre then, rich and liquid-dark, save for the left eye, where in the iris that ringed black pupil, a fleck of color shone.

And it shone red, and indeed, red is a poor word for the color it shone.

Scarlet call it, or crimson, redder than a rooster's wattles or a glazed apple in a pig's mouth.

Thus did I enter the world, with an ill-luck name and a pin-prick of living blood emblazoned in my gaze.

"Take her, then." Letting go my hand, she shoved me violently. I turned my head at the last for one final glimpse of my mother, but her face was averted, shoulders shaking with soundless tears. I had entered a different world.

Is it any wonder, then, that I became what I did? Delaunay maintains that it was ever my destiny, and perhaps he is right, but this I know is true: When Love cast me out, it was Cruelty who took pity on me.