A Gathering of Shadows (Shades of Magic, #2)

by V.E. Schwab

People survived by being cautious, but they got ahead by being bold.

“Politics is a dance until the moment it becomes a war. And we control the music.”

“Strength and weakness are tangled things,” the Aven Essen had said. “They look so much alike, we often confuse them, the way we confuse magic and power.”

“Everyone thinks I have a death wish, you know? But I don’t want to die—dying is easy. No, I want to live, but getting close to death is the only way to feel alive. And once you do, it makes you realize that everything you were doing before wasn’t actually living. It was just making do. Call me crazy, but I think we do the best living when the stakes are high.”