The Once and Future Witches

Agnes looks up at him, this man who loves all of her, this knight who has gotten his tales crossed and fallen in love with the witch instead of the princess.

One witch you can laugh at. Three you can burn. But what do you do with a hundred?
Most people run, it turns out

It must be upsetting to discover themselves in the kind of story where the witches make friends with the flames instead, where they snap their chains and laugh up at the stars with sharp teeth

I think it means witches will return, one day, no matter how many of us they burn.”

men like Gideon ought to stop breaking people, because sometimes they mend twice as strong

She knows that history digs a shallow grave, and that the past is always waiting to rise again

She’s the brave one, the ruthless one, the witch who traded the birthing-chamber for the battlefield, the kitchen for the knife. She is bloody Boadicea and heartless Hera, the mother who became a monster

She’s the fierce one, the feral one, the witch who lives free in the wild woods. She’s the siren and the selkie, the virgin and the valkyrie; Artemis and Athena

I am terrified and I am terrible. I am fearful and I am something to be feared.

Of the terrible risk of loving someone more than yourself and the secret strength it grants you