Foxglove

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of gender discrimination, pregnancy termination, and sexual content.

“Where Death was dark intrigue, Fate shimmered as if a beacon for all the world’s light.”

This quote reveals Signa’s thoughts upon first meeting Fate. She immediately compares the two brothers, recognizing that they could hardly be more different and thus setting up Fate as an antagonist to Death. The use of metaphor and simile highlight the otherworldliness of the brothers, emphasizing their supernatural presence along with Signa’s feelings about them.

“Signa didn’t care much for being referred to as one of Fate’s ‘creations.’ After all she’d overcome, boiling her choices down to Fate made her success feel unearned. Like he somehow had a hand in all her hardest decisions and her biggest triumphs.”

Signa thinks this when she learns that Fate believes he is in total control of all human lives. Not only does this early quote allude to the final actions of the previous novel in which Signa faced great hardships, but it also continues to show her disdain for Fate. This quote relates to the major theme of Fate Versus Free Will as Signa questions how much of her life can be attributed to either.

“‘You cannot protect me from who I am.’ As she said it, the realization of those words sank in. Already Signa had accepted the dark power within her. Still, there would always be that whisper. The one that she had grown up with, that had made her believe everything about her was wrong.”

Signa tells this to Death while they discuss her powers as a reaper and how she traded Percy’s life for Blythe’s at the end of Belladonna. Signa had questioned her use of her deathly powers in the previous novel and still struggles with them here. This quote foreshadows the disdain Signa later feels for her destructive powers and shows why she might prefer the powers of creation possessed by Life.