A Torch Against the Night (An Ember in the Ashes, #2)

by Sabaa Tahir

When the fear takes over, use the only thing more powerful, more indestructible, to fight it: your spirit. Your heart.

“If the Cook offends you, you can kill her yourself.” “I have limitations, Keris. She is your creation. See to it. She has already cost us. The Resistance leader was essential. And now he’s dead.”

“This is what it means to have faith, to believe in something greater than yourself.”

Pop used to say that standing by someone during their darkest times creates a bond. A sense of obligation that is less a weight and more a gift.

“Your emotions make you human,” Elias says. “Even the unpleasant ones have a purpose. Don’t lock them away. If you ignore them, they just get louder and angrier.”

“Always so afraid of the darkness within.” Mamie takes my hands. “Don’t you see? So long as you fight the darkness, you stand in the light.”

Few people want witnesses to their pain, and grief is the worst pain of all.

“You are my temple,” I murmur as I kneel beside her. “You are my priest. You are my prayer. You are my release.”

“Most people,” Cain says, “are nothing but glimmers in the great darkness of time. But you, Helene Aquilla, are no swift-burning spark. You are a torch against the night—if you dare to let yourself burn.”

“But my honor also demands that I not take a woman’s decision about her own fate away from her. Skies know there’s enough of that in this blasted world.”

True suffering lies in the expectation of pain as much as in the pain itself.”

What is there to live for if not the moments of joy? What is there to fight for?”

Your emotions make you human, Elias said to me weeks ago in the Serran Range. Even the unpleasant ones have a purpose. If you ignore them, they just get louder and angrier.

“Sometimes, Elias,” she says, “loneliness is a choice.”

Perhaps grief is like battle: After experiencing enough of it, your body’s instincts take over.

Laia of Serra. The ember waiting to burn down the Empire.”