A Reaper at the Gates (An Ember in the Ashes, #3)

by Sabaa Tahir

“Loving them will only hurt you,” Shaeva says. “In the end, they will fade. You will endure. Every time you bid farewell to yet another part of your old life, a piece of you will die.”

Pain is a choice. Succumb to it and fail. Or defy it and triumph.

The cruelest anger comes from the deepest pain.

Strange how monsters can reach from beyond the grave, as potent in death as they were in life.

I wonder if my entire life will be a series of moments in which I realize I’m an idiot long after I can actually do anything about it.

Love. I sigh. Love is joy coupled with misery, elation bound to despair. It is a fire that beckons me gently and then burns when I get too close. I hate love. I yearn for it. And it drives me mad.

“You should love whom you wish. How the Empire would treat you if they knew, it’s not—”

Needing protection is not a weakness. Refusing to trust your allies is.”

“Everyone believes that nothing concerns them until the monsters are knocking on their doors!”

Humanity means emotions. Emotions mean instability.

the battlefield. In battle, you will find your vigor. In battle, you will find your strength.

“How little we know of people until we watch them break. Until we strip them down to their smallest, weakest selves.

“It is true, Laia,” the Nightbringer says, and my very soul shudders, for I know he tells no lies. “Your mother lives. You know her. And now, you are free.”

NOW THATS A PLOT TWIST

“Forgive her, if you can,” I say. “Remember that fate is never what we think it will be. Your mother—my mother—we can never understand their torments. Their hurts. We may suffer the consequences of their mistakes and their sins, but we should not carry them on our hearts. We don’t deserve that.”

I’m a monster. Monsters don’t merit comfort.”

justice exists only for those who take it. I’ll be damned if I’m not one of them.

I will never understand the savagery of war, even when it is my foes being destroyed.

Curse this world for what it does to the mothers, for what it does to the daughters. Curse it for making us strong through loss and pain, our hearts torn from our chests again and again. Curse it for forcing us to endure.

“Those who ignited the blaze must suffer its wrath,”

And his champions, those three flames in which he placed all his hopes—Laia of Serra, Helene Aquilla, and Elias Veturius—I smother those flames. For I have taken the Blood Shrike’s soul. The Waiting Place has taken the Soul Catcher’s humanity. And I will crush Laia of Serra’s heart.