Amelia Atwater-Rhodes - Shattered Mirror

“We have forever. I’ll see you again,” he answered with certainty. “But before you go—”

Kristopher tilted her face up and kissed her.

It occurred to Sarah then that she had never been kissed, really kissed, before.

However, as first kisses went . . .

Like all of Kristopher’s art, his kisses were expertly done.

Kristopher was the one who broke the kiss, though he kept his arms around her and did not pull back far. “I’m sorry. I’ve wanted to do that for”—he shrugged—“too long.”

“That is a moment you never need to apologize for.”

He smiled, and in the expression Sarah saw the true Christopher, whom she had come to know and trust.

“There are a million other moments, both past and future, that I should apologize to you for,” he said lightly. “I might as well start earning credit.”

A million moments, both past and future. Thousands of years of hatred, between both their kinds, could hardly be undone quickly. Even in the eternity that she potentially had ahead of her, she didn’t think she was up to a job as a peacemaker. But if she had been . . .

Single Earth would take her in if she asked. Nissa could teach her how to survive without killing. There were pockets of peace in the world, and if she could just find one of them, she could make a life there. As Kristopher had pointed out, she had forever.

AMELIAATWATER-RHODESlives in Concord, Massachusetts, with her family. Born in 1984, she wrote her first novel, In the Forests of the Night, at age thirteen and her second novel, Demon in My View, an ALA Quick Pick for Young Adults, just two years later. Named one of the 20 Teens Who Will Change the World by Teen People, Atwater-Rhodes has been featured in Seventeen, USA Today, Entertainment Weekly, and The New Yorker and has appeared on The Rosie O’Donnell Show and CBS This Morning. In the Forests of the Night has been praised as “remarkable” ( Voice of Youth Advocates ) and “mature and polished” ( Booklist ), while Publishers Weekly has praised Demon in My View as a book “readers will drain . . . in one big gulp.”