So you've made a few bad decisions. So have I. So has Elias. So has everyone attempting to do something difficult. That doesn't mean that you give up, you fool. Do you understand?
Children are born to break their mothers’ hearts, my boy.
You—you were like me. You were a child. A normal child. And that was taken from you.”“Does that bother you?”“Well, it certainly makes you harder to hate.
She's still clinging to the side of her mountain, just like I'm still wandering lost in my battlefield.
We match each other stroke for stroke until I get a hit on her right arm. She tries to switch sword arms, but I jab my scim at her wrist faster than she can parry. Her scim goes flying, and I tackle h...
Are the Trials starting?” The girl claps her hands over her mouth. “I'm sorry,” she whispers. “I—”“It's all right.” I don't smile at her. It will only scare her. For a female slave, a smile from a Mas...
Disappear! I scream the word in my mind, queen of the desolate landscape therein, ordering her ragged troops to a last stand.
The rest is just wishes and hope, the most fragile of things.
There are two kinds of guilt: the kind that drowns you until you’re useless, and the kind that fires your soul to purpose.
Elias and Laia are each other’s countermelodies. I am just a dissonant note.
Fight back, Laia. For Darin. For Izzi. For every Scholar this beast has abused. Fight. A scream bursts from me, and I claw at Marcus’s face, but a punch to my stomach takes the wind out of my lungs. I...
I don't smile at her. It will only scare her. For a female slave, a smile from a Mask is not usually a good thing.
You’re sure this is what you want?” I search her eyes for doubt, fear, uncertainty, but all I see is that fire. Ten hells“I’m sure”“Then I’ll find a way
Failure doesn't define you. It's what you do after the failure that determines whether you are a leader or a waste of perfectly good air.
Rage colors her every movement. Rage that has nothing to do with her so-called bodyguards and everything to do with me and her and the confusion rolling around inside the both of us. This should be in...
The voice is deep and soft, not a sound so much as a feeling. It is storm and wind and leaves twisting in the night. It is roots sucking deep at the earth, and the pale, sightless creatures that live...
It's a trick question, Aquilla. A Mask is not made. She is remade. First she is destroyed. Stripped down to the trembling child that lives at her core. It doesn't matter how strong she thinks she is....
When did you star here?” I ask her.“Three days ago. Sir. Aspirant. Um—” She wrings her hands.“Veturius is fine.”She walks carefully, gingerly—the Commandant must have whipped her recently. And yet she...
It takes only a split second for life to go horribly wrong. To fix the mess, I need a thousand things to go right. The distance from one bit of luck to the next feels as great as the distance across o...
Failure doesn't define you. It's what you do after you fail that determines whether you are a leader or a waste of perfectly good air.
