The Widow's House (The Dagger and the Coin, #4)

by Daniel Abraham

The sum of my hopes right now is not to die on a frozen salt coast anytime in the next three days. That’s tricky enough. Let’s not borrow anything more until after.”

She had become the woman she’d only pretended to be, and the weight of it was more than she’d anticipated.

“Occurs to me that the secret of the world may be don’t do the same stupid thing twice.”

You have all the time there is between right now and whenever it’s too late.”

“How long can you pretend to be something before you aren’t pretending anymore?”

Hoping to go back to what the world had been was trying to build wood from ashes.

Battle is the proving ground in which boys discover what it means to be men. She wondered now whether he had truly believed that, or if it was only a story he’d told himself to forgive what could not be forgiven.

Defeat was not entirely defeat when you could sail away from it,

It was lovely. That it could not last made it more so.

“The world is burning. Anything that doesn’t end in ashes is worth doing.

“There are as many definitions of justice as there are people making them. Justice is doing what you said you would do, or being forced to. Or justice is getting back what was taken from your family. Or justice is hurting the man who hurt you. Anyone who wants to make the world just has only to say what justice is first, and then impose it on everyone with a different thought.

Getting back lost confidence is harder than stirring cream out of coffee.

What my father used to tell me, whatever a man loves, that’s what you grab him by. Not a kind man, my father, but not a stupid one either.”