Throne of Glass (Throne of Glass, #1)

by Sarah J. Maas

When she awoke every morning, she repeated the same words: I will not be afraid.

With the growing corruption of Adarlan and the king’s campaign to hunt them down and execute them, the faeries and Fae fled, seeking shelter in the wild, untouched places of the world. The King of Adarlan had outlawed it all—magic, Fae, faeries—and removed any trace so thoroughly that even those who had magic in their blood almost believed it had never really existed,

She could still smell the fires that had raged throughout her eighth and ninth years—the smoke of burning books chock-full of ancient, irreplaceable knowledge, the screams of gifted seers and healers as they’d been consumed by the flames, the storefronts and sacred places shattered and desecrated and erased from history.

“Despite your visions of a perfect world under an empire, your rulers and politicians are quick to destroy each other.

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

“And what’s wrong with headstrong girls?” she pressed. “Other than the fact that they’re not wooden-headed ninnies who can only open their mouths to give orders and gossip?”

“We each survive in our own way.”

criminal or not, they were still human.

“Courage of the heart is very rare,”

This is the world where I only picked you to be my Champion because I knew it would annoy my father.” She shook her head, but he kept going. “But if I had refused to sponsor a Champion, my father would have seen it as a sign of dissent, and I’m not yet enough of a man to stand against him like that. So I chose Adarlan’s Assassin to be my Champion, because the choice of my Champion was the only choice I had.”

“Life shouldn’t be like this,” he said, their eyes meeting as he gestured at the room. “And … and the world shouldn’t be like this.”

“Before you start lecturing me on my morality, or before you run away and hide behind your bodyguards, just know that there’s not a moment that goes by when I don’t wonder what it will be like to kill for him—the man who destroyed everything that I loved!”

She brought her mouth close to his ear. “My name is Celaena Sardothien,” she whispered. “But it makes no difference if my name’s Celaena or Lillian or Bitch, because I’d still beat you, no matter what you call me.” She smiled at him as she stood.