If you could have a Grace, what would it be?

I’ve always struggled to learn foreign languages, and envy people for whom this is easy. I think I might choose the Grace of learning and speaking foreign languages.

Read on for excerpts of Fire, Bitterblue, and Jane, Unlimited by Kristin Cashore

FIRE

CHAPTER ONE

IT DID NOT surprise Fire that the man in the forest shot her. What surprised her was that he shot her by accident.

The arrow whacked her square in the arm and threw her sideways against a boulder, which knocked the air out of her. The pain was too great to ignore, but behind it she focused her mind, made it cold and sharp, like a single star in a black winter sky. If he was a cool man, certain in what he was doing, he would be guarded against her, but Fire rarely encountered this type. More often the men who tried to hurt her were angry or arrogant or frightened enough that she could find a crack in the fortress of their thoughts, and ease her way in.

She found this man’s mind instantly—so open, so welcoming, even, that she wondered if he could be a simpleton hired by someone else. She fumbled for the knife in her boot. His footfalls, and then his breath, sounded through the trees. She had no time to waste, for he would shoot her again as soon as he found her. You don’t want to kill me. You’ve changed your mind.

Then he rounded a tree and his blue eyes caught hold of her, and widened in astonishment and horror.

“Not a girl!” he cried out.

Fire’s thoughts scrambled. Had he not meant to strike her? Did he not know who she was? Had he meant to murder Archer? She forced her voice calm. “Who was your target?”

“Not who,” he said. “What. Your cloak is brown pelt. Your dress is brown. Rocks alive, girl,” he said in a burst of exasperation. He marched toward her and inspected the arrow embedded in her upper arm, the blood that soaked her cloak, her sleeve, her headscarf. “A fellow would think you were hoping to be shot by a hunter.”

More accurately, a poacher, since Archer forbade hunting in these woods at this time of day, just so that Fire could pass through here dressed this way. Besides, she’d never seen this shortish, tawny-haired, light-eyed man before. Well. If he was not only a poacher, but a poacher who’d accidentally shot Fire while hunting illegally, then he would not want to turn himself in to Archer’s famous temper; but that was what she was going to have to make him want to do. She was losing blood, and she was beginning to feel lightheaded. She would need his assistance to get home.

“Now I’ll have to kill you,” he said glumly. And then, before she could begin to address that rather bizarre statement: “Wait. Who are you? Tell me you’re not her.”