The Assassin's Blade (Throne of Glass, #0.1-0.5)

by Sarah J. Maas

A city of light and music, watched over by an alabaster castle with an opal tower so bright it could be viewed for miles.

This girl wasn’t like wildfire—she was wildfire. Deadly and uncontrollable. And slightly out of her wits.

The gods had vanished, her mother had once claimed. But had they? Had it been some god who had visited tonight, clothed in the skin of a battered young woman?

Hoped that an assassin’s jewel would pay for a healer’s education. So maybe it was the gods at work. Maybe it was some force beyond them, beyond mortal comprehension. Or maybe it was just for what and who Celaena would never be.

“If you can learn to endure pain, you can survive anything. Some people learn to embrace it—to love it. Some endure it through drowning it in sorrow, or by making themselves forget. Others turn it into anger. But Ansel let her pain become hate, and let it consume her until she became something else entirely—a person I don’t think she ever wished to be.”

The music broke her apart and put her back together, only to rend her asunder again and again.

“You’re a damned idiot,” she breathed. “You’re a moron and an ass and a damned idiot.” He looked like she had hit him. But she went on, and grasped both sides of his face, “Because I’d pick you.” And then she kissed him.

In the silence of her bedroom, she swore an oath to the moonlight that if Sam were hurt, no force in the world would hold her back from slaughtering everyone responsible.

He brushed his lips against hers. “I love you,” he breathed against her mouth. “And from today onward, I want to never be separated from you. Wherever you go, I go. Even if that means going to Hell itself, wherever you are, that’s where I want to be. Forever.”

“My name is Celaena Sardothien,” she whispered, “and I will not be afraid.”