To Clutch a Razor (Curse Bearer, #2)

by Veronica Roth

He looks shifty to her, like he might become something else entirely if she doesn’t keep an eye on him.

a magic that uses pain as currency, the magic of monster-hunting Knights of the Holy Order. She can feel the agony that brought it into being every time she walks past it, like a sour taste in her mouth, like an echo of a scream.

Monsters were everywhere, pain was inevitable, and only the strong could survive both.

One of the great lies that humanity tells is that time produces wisdom.

But now, the way it presses against him … it’s like something that was alive in the air, something that danced around him, is now dead. The silence is stifling.

She had a way of making suffering feel almost like heroism.

“‘I didn’t have a choice.’ Everyone’s favorite excuse for ruining someone else’s life,”

They trained from childhood. And more than that, they were driven by the deep conviction that anyone they drew their sword against was a soulless, life-sucking, humanity-torturing being that needed to die.

and she thinks that if she’s going to spend her life untangling all this pain, at least she has someone she cares about to do it with.

But not until she knows where the pain came from—not until she knows what it’s teaching him.

A drowning man will clutch at a razor.