When Winter Comes

I always have a few collections of short stories and/or novellas around for those times when I just want to dip into a world quickly. This morning I read Sharon Shinn's novella "When Winter Comes" from the collection The Queen in Winter, and this was a passage that grabbed me, so I wanted to share it here.

People always say they're willing to die for the ones they love, as if nothing else they could do would be so hard. But it is harder to keep living for someone else, doing everything in your power to keep that person safe and breathing. I know. All these past weeks I have been living for my sister and her son, battling everyone else in the world, or so it seems, to keep Annie and Kinnon alive. I have defied my father, broken my mother's heart, traveled in secret, gone without sleep, gone without food, and hidden from violent strangers trying to kill all of us because of the magic in Kinnon's veins.

Most days it would be easier to be dead.

"When Winter Comes" seems to be set in the same world as the Shinn series that begins with Mystic and Rider, and I enjoyed this novella enough that I'll probably pick that up as well. Those sneaky writers keep pulling me in! ;) I read the Samaria trilogy by Shinn years ago and loved them, but for some reason, I haven't kept up with her more recent work.