A heart did not have to be stone to be strong.
I sighed. I hate the vamp jobs. They think they’re so suave. It’s not enough for them to slaughter and eat you like a zombie would. No, they want it to be all sexy, too. And, trust me: vampires? Not. Sexy. I mean, sure, their glamours can be pretty hot, but the dry-as-bone corpse bodies shimmering underneath? Nothing attractive there.
Why must I always be a man’s servant?” Lada demanded. “If anything, I should be partners with the devil, not his servant.
Christmas Eve is my favorite... I think the anticipation is more fun than anything else. I kind of lost that. The idea that something – food, traditions, an arbitrary date on the calendar – can be special because we decide it should be. We make it special. Not just for ourselves, but for others.
There are other ways to beat someone than with fists.
To Radu, my brother, I do not acknowledge your new title, nor Mehmed’s. Tell the lying coward I send no congratulations. He sent none to me when I took my throne in spite of him. You did not choose right. Tell Mehmed Wallachia is mine. With all defiance, Lada Dracul, Prince of Wallachia.
I cannot imagine a god who hates anything that is love, any way we find to take tender care of each other. I want you to find that same love, and I never want you to hate yourself for any love that is in you.
He would die on the wall tonight, between his brothers and his enemies, because he could no longer distinguish between the two. They had finally come to the end. Whichever side won, neither would triumph.
If Lada was the spiky green weed that sprouted in the midst of a drought-cracked riverbed, Radu was the delicate, sweet rose that wilted in anything less that the perfect conditions.
I sought to puncture Heaven and instead discovered Hell.
And there – when he smiles, his whole faces lights up. It’s like his other expressions are placeholders.
Time, the moon, arguments, and, most of all, coins. All good things are circular.
Mercy is the one thing I cannot afford. Not yet. When Wallachia is stable, when we have rebuilt, then yes. What we do now, we do so that someday mercy will be able to survive here.
Because I am in love with you. Because I cannot be around you for fear you will finally see what is written across my heart. Because the pain of you is one I cannot bear.
Lada made her face stone, her heart a mountain. A mountain that would never be pierced to let cold, clear water flow. “Nothing holds me here.
Not being blameless is not the same as being guilty.
Some things, the best things, do last forever.
Sometimes we were strangers even to ourselves.
A well-wielded pen is a woman’s best weapon.
Wallachia needs you, and you deserve Wallachia. Let your loyalty be only where your heart is. Everything else can fall by the road and be trodden underfoot as we pass to our home. My fierce little girl. You can do anything.