More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
The only thing all the intended disorientation had accomplished was to familiarize her with the building. Idiots.
While some of the prisoners were people accused of attempting to practice magic—not that they could, given that magic had vanished from the kingdom—these days, more and more rebels arrived at Endovier.
He was achingly handsome, and couldn’t have been older than twenty. Princes are not supposed to be handsome! They’re sniveling, stupid, repulsive creatures! This one … this … How unfair of him to be royal and beautiful.
Still, the image haunted his dreams throughout the night: a lovely girl gazing at the stars, and the stars who gazed back.
“Guards are of no use in a library.” Oh, how wrong he was! Libraries were full of ideas—perhaps the most dangerous and powerful of all weapons.
Her heart threw itself backward and clung to the bars of her ribcage.
I am Celaena Sardothien, Adarlan’s Assassin. If these men knew who I was, they’d stop laughing. I am Celaena Sardothien. I am going to win. I will not be afraid.
Celaena eyed the pianoforte. She used to play—oh, she’d loved to play, loved music, the way music could break and heal and make everything seem possible and heroic.
piece, but it made her into something clean and new. She was surprised that her hands had not forgotten, that somewhere in her mind, after a year of darkness and slavery, music was still alive and breathing. That somewhere, between the notes, was Sam. She forgot about time as she drifted between pieces, voicing the unspeakable, opening old wounds, playing and playing as the sound forgave and saved her.
He wondered when she’d notice him, or if she’d ever stop at all. He wouldn’t mind listening forever. He had come here with the intention of embarrassing a snide assassin, and had instead found a young woman pouring her secrets into a pianoforte.
“What’s the point in having a mind if you don’t use it to make judgments?” “What’s the point in having a heart if you don’t use it to spare others from the harsh judgments of your mind?”
She rolled her eyes. “If it pleases Your Magnanimous Holiness, I shall call you by your first name.”
“We all bear scars, Dorian. Mine just happen to be more visible than most.
He saw her face each time he closed his eyes. She haunted his thoughts, made him wish to do grand and wonderful things in her name, made him want to be a man who deserved to wear a crown.
she carried her wooden staff, which stretched as high as her head. To honor her, Celaena realized, her eyes stinging. One fellow warrior acknowledging the other.
She stood not ten feet from the King of Adarlan. Freedom or death lay at this table. Her past and future were seated on a glass throne.
For a heartbeat, she saw the king with stark clarity. He was just a man—a man with too much power. And in that one heartbeat, she didn’t fear him. I will not be afraid, she vowed, wrapping the familiar words around her heart.
Though a bolt of fear went through her at the thought, though standing against the king was the one thing Celaena had thought she’d never be brave enough to do, she couldn’t forget the three scars on her back, or the slaves she’d left in Endovier, or the five hundred butchered Eyllwe rebels.
She met Grave’s stare and smiled as she bent her knees, holding the staff in two hands. You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into, little man.
He was done with politics and intrigue. He loved her, and no empire, no king, and no earthly fear would keep him from her. No, if they tried to take her from him, he’d rip the world apart with his bare hands. And for some reason, that didn’t terrify him.
“You could rattle the stars,” she whispered. “You could do anything, if you only dared. And deep down, you know it, too. That’s what scares you most.”
