Empire of the Damned (Empire of the Vampire, #2)

by Jay Kristoff

This world won’t give you what you want just because you asked nicely, girl. Not respect. Not love. Not peace. You get what you earn. You eat what you kill.’

‘A life without books is a life not lived, Dior. There’s a magik like no other to be found in them. To open a book is to open a door—to another place, another time, another mind. And usually, mademoiselle, it’s a mind far sharper than your own.’

“The folk I held dearest were always the ones I quarreled with hardest. Folk who weren’t afraid to slap me out of my bullshit, or tell me I was being an arse. There’s no friend under heaven like an honest one.”

“Phoebe scoffed, shaking her head. ‘The goddesses ruined a perfectly good arsehole when they put teeth in yer mouth, didn’t they?’

Lmfao

“Phoebe gestured to that tooled leather collar about her throat, and I noted a small brown pine seed, tight-bound among the everknots. “‘What’s it for?’ I asked. ‘Good fortune?’ “‘Ye wear it into battle. So something might grow from the soil where ye die. Ye ask what kind of childhood I had?’ Phoebe shrugged, meeting my eyes. ‘A short one, Silversaint.’

“‘But don’t ye see? We don’t get broken. We’re made broken. We are not whole alone. But if we’re blessed, if we’re brave, we might find those few whose edges fit against our own. Like pieces of the same puzzle, or shards of the same shattered blade. Those people who, in their own broken way, make our broken edge complete.’

“That there is nothing that grows as deep on this green earth, nothing that shines as bright in all the gables of heaven, nothing that burns as fierce in the blazing heart of hell, than a parent’s love for their child.”