Days of Blood & Starlight (Daughter of Smoke & Bone, #2)

by Laini Taylor

“Yes,” he said, wary, thinking of the thurible, and Karou. “As long as you’re alive, there’s always a chance things will get better.”

“I don’t imagine nature spares us a thought except to weep when she sees us coming.”

A man like Akiva crosses worlds to find you, infiltrates the enemy capital just to dance with you, bends heaven and hell to avenge your death, saves your comrade and kin from torture and death, and you send him off looking gut-punched, diminished, carved hollow?

Ziri’s soul felt like the high roaming wind of the Adelphas Mountains and the beat of stormhunters’ wings, like the beautiful, mournful, eternal song of the wind flutes that had filled their caves with music he could not possibly remember. It felt like home.

Akiva felt something course through him, or many things: a tremor of love and a chill of awe, a wave of power and a surge of hope. Hope. Truly, hope was as unkillable as the great shield beetles that lay inert for years beneath the desert sands, waiting for prey to happen near. What possible grounds had he for hope? As long as you’re alive, he had told Liraz, only half believing it himself, there is always a chance. Well, he was alive, and so was Karou, and they would be in the same world.