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

by Sarah J. Maas

It wasn’t the girl’s fault, she had to remind herself. Not her fault at all that she didn’t know how to fight back.

The world was wide-open—wide-open and hers for the taking, if she dared.

“Where do men find it in themselves to do such monstrous things? How do they find it acceptable?”

“I’ve become an assassin because I had no choice. But you have a choice, Ansel. You’ve always had a choice. Please don’t kill him.” Please don’t make me kill you was what she truly meant to say.

“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.”

She knew the day was drifting along because of the shifting light on the wall of the bedroom. She knew the world still passed by, unaffected by the death of a young man, unaware that he’d ever existed and breathed and loved her. She hated the world for continuing on.