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.

Most successful missions are just a series of barely averted disasters.”

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.

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

“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.”

What point is there in being human if you don’t let yourself feel anything?”

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

I miss that girl. That Laia. That version of myself that burned brightest when Elias Veturius was near.

determines whether you are a leader or a waste of perfectly good air.”

It takes only a split second for life to go horribly wrong. To fix the mess, I need a thousand things to go right. The distance from one bit of luck to the next feels as great as the distance across oceans. But, I decide in this moment, I will bridge that distance, again and again, until I win. I will not fail.

“Because sane plans never work, girl,” she says. “Only the mad ones do.”