You’re going to get all the things you think you can’t have,” she says quietly, reaching out to rub red lipstick from my cheek. “You just don’t know it yet.
Plunge a heated sword into oil, and any small flaw will turn into a crack. But quenched in blood as you were, none of you broke. You were only hardened.
It was a voice so full of emotion that it sounded like no emotion at all.
They eat one another. They eat us. They eat every damn thing. They’ll drink up the whole world if we let them.
I think I really am back this time, Call, Aaron’s voice said. Now what the heck are we going to do?
Each person seemed to have a destination, but Val was a piece of driftwood, spinning down a river, not even sure in what direction she was moving. But she knew how to make herself spin faster.
Scared, silly-scared, scared, scared, scared,” Lutie chanted against her neck.
She shrieked and shrieked for her mother, but her mother was already there. Her mother was the monster.
She’s my wife,” Cardan says, his voice carrying over the crowd. “The rightful High Queen of Elfhame. And most definitely not in exile.
Tamara gave Jasper a long, considering look. Then she picked up her bowl of pudding and turned it upside down on top of his head. Purple goop ran down his face. He yelped in surprise.
And now she was sixteen and felt like she had no imagination left.
But vows should never be to a crown. They should be to a ruler. And they should be of your own free will. I am your king, and beside me stands my queen. But it is your choice whether or not to follow us. Your will shall be your own.
I’m not afraid,” Zacharov says, still looking at Anton. “It takes guts to kill a man with your hands. You don’t have the balls.
I take a deep breath, at home and homesick all at the same time.
I had a tutor who wanted me to believe that mercy is a kind of sorrow and that since evil is the motive of sorrow, evil is also the motive of mercy. I thought that my tutor was old and cruel, and maybe he was – but now I think he was also right.
There was a brittleness in her tone, and Baphen was uncomfortably reminded that some prophecies are fulfilled by the very actions meant to prevent them.
He just looked like a pretty boy, tall and lanky. She thought again of the crumpled paper in her purse and of him, caged beneath a cemetery. How long had he been there? How long had he looked just as he did now? A hundred years? Two hundred? Could he even remember the press of time? Maybe having stepped outside of it would drive anybody crazy.
Maybe the point of real friendship isn’t that you have to repay kindness, but whatever. At least I should try. As.
Then Ivan and Marya Morevna built a pyre and burned Koschei until he was ash. And then they lived happily, visiting each of Ivan’s sisters and their bird-husbands, all of whom declared that Ivan did the right thing to risk so much for a woman as beautiful and fierce as Marya Morevna.” “If she was so fierce, how come she didn’t just save herself?” Tana asked.
It’s the thrill of leaping without being able to see the ground below you, right before you realise that’s called falling.