Throne of Glass (Throne of Glass, #1)

by Sarah J. Maas

The only thing all the intended disorientation had accomplished was to familiarize her with the building. Idiots.

She’d been newly orphaned, and even at eight, she knew that a life with Arobynn, with a new name that no one would recognize but someday everyone would fear, was a chance to start over. To escape the fate that led her to leap into the icy river that night ten years ago.

Small white flowers lay at the foot of her cot, and many infant-sized footprints led in and out of the tent.

Magic was dead, the Fae were banished or executed, and she would never again have anything to do with the rise and fall of kingdoms. She wasn’t fated for anything. Not anymore.

Through a clearing in the swirling mass, a cluster of stars could be seen. He couldn’t help thinking that they gazed down at her.

Still, the image haunted his dreams throughout the night: a lovely girl gazing at the stars, and the stars who gazed back.

Libraries were full of ideas—perhaps the most dangerous and powerful of all weapons.

“We each survive in our own way.”

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.

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.

“I don’t think anyone who plays like that can be just a criminal. It seems like you have a soul,” he teased. “Of course I have a soul. Everyone has a soul.”

“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 was a criminal—a prodigy at killing, a Queen of the Underworld—and yet … yet she was just a girl, sent at seventeen to Endovier.

all bear scars, Dorian. Mine just happen to be more visible than most.

Celaena hit the landing, ran for the tomb door, and prayed to gods whose names she’d forgotten, but who she hoped had not yet forgotten her.

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.

Freedom or death lay at this table. Her past and future were seated on a glass throne.

“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.”