Kelly Nickinson

“Beauty was your armor. Fragile stuff, all show. But what's inside you? That's steel. It's brave and unbreakable. And it doesn't need fixing.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Ruin and Rising

“Better terrible truths than kind lies.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows

“There was no part of him that was not broken, that had not healed wrong, and there was no part of him that was not stronger for having been broken. No one knew who he was. No one knew where he came from. He'd become Kaz Brekker, cripple and confidence man, bastard of the Barrel.
The gloves were his one concession to weakness. Since that night among the bodies and the swim from the Reaper's Barge, he had not been able to bear the feeling of skin against skin. It was excruciating to him, revolting. It was the only piece of his past that he could not forge into something dangerous.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows

“This isn’t … it isn’t a trick, is it?” Her voice was smaller than she wanted it to be.

The shadow of something dark moved across Kaz’s face. “If it were a trick, I’d promise you safety. I’d offer you happiness. I don’t know if that exists in the Barrel, but you’ll find none of it with me.”

For some reason, those words had comforted her. Better terrible truths than kind lies.

“All right,” she said. “How do we begin?”

“Let’s start by getting out of here and finding you some proper clothes. Oh, and Inej,” he said as he led her out of the salon, “don’t ever sneak up on me again.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows