The Complete Daughter of Smoke and Bone Trilogy

by Laini Taylor

perhaps Fate laid out your life for you like a dress on a bed, and you could either wear it or go naked.

Alway go naked, it is more fun that way :D

“Please. If you ever did ask me to marry you, don’t even think I would identify myself as some addendum of you, like an old lady signing her rent check with perfect penmanship as Mrs. Husband Name—” “But you’d say yes, is that what you’re saying?” Mik’s blue eyes twinkled. “What?” “That sounded like the only quibble is what you’d call yourself, not whether or not you’d say yes.”

What can a soldier do when mercy is treason,

“You’re safe because you would gut him with your bare hands if he ever tried to touch you. I’d say that I would do it, but I know that by the time anyone else got there our uncle would already be pulled inside out, and less ugly for it, too.”

She stood with Rath. Look at me, she thought with weird, cold pride. Everything was sharp and sure. Stabbing was awful, and she’d never have believed she would stand when she could run. She loved to run. But standing felt good, too. She looked at Rath. He looked at her. She thought he might urge her to go, but he didn’t. Maybe he just knew it wouldn’t matter, that there was no safety, but maybe . . . maybe he liked not being alone. He was, after all, just a boy. Sveva smiled at him, and there they stood, so near the end of their journey they could feel the mist of waterfalls from on high, but they were in the shadows of angels now, and not likely to ever come out again. Unless of course there was another miracle.

“Just this aura of weird you have.”

Me.

What good is having friends if they can’t help you?”

Anyone who would wear all white like that clearly had issues.

True xD

She felt his absence, the way she always had—as cold rushing in to fill the void he left behind.

Six bastards had carried the name before him? It was a lot; too many. Some must have died in infancy, or at the training camp. Hazael was probably going to tell him the name was cursed. But no. His brother said, “It means that the cremation urn is full, no room for your ashes. You have no choice.” He smiled his hapless, open smile. “You have to live.”

We’re going with you, and any dying is going to be done at the other end of our swords.”

“Well, since she was too afraid to talk to him, she drew him a treasure map. She hid it in his violin case when he was performing—they worked at the same theater, but they’d never spoken—and she left early that night so she wouldn’t see him get it. In case he got all pained-looking or something, you know, and she just couldn’t take it. She’d already decided that if he didn’t follow the map to the treasure, she would just never go to work again and that would be the end of that.” “What was the treasure?” “She was.”

Do the thing. Kill the monster. Change the world.

“Do you know that they died watching the sky for you?”

A dream dirty and bruised is better than no dream at all.

They weren’t two fighting off eight. They were two cutting through eight.

the Misbegotten schooling the swaggering Silverswords in the vital difference between a guard and a soldier

She felt his fingertip slide over her skin, and spoke each letter as it formed. “Z-U-Z-A-N-A. Zuzana. W-I-L-L. Will. Y-O-U.” She paused. “You.” She lay very still, listening with her skin for the next letter. “M.” Her voice dropped. She watched Mik’s face. He was smiling to himself, mischievous, his eyes on his work. Strawberry stubble covered his jaw. A beam of sunshine slipped through a broken slat in the shutter and glanced across his eyelashes; they looked dusted with light. “A.” Zuzana said. Oh god. Zuzana will you M-A— Her heart pounded. Could he feel it through her back? When they’d talked about marriage back in Prague she’d been dismissive. Well. She’d been embarrassed to have been caught thinking about it; that wasn’t who she was, some flit girl who dreamed of wedding gowns, and she was just way too young. R, she felt. “R,” she whispered. Mik’s hand fell still. “Wrong,” he said. “That was a K.” “K? That’s not how you spell—” She cut herself off. “How you spell what?” Mik’s voice was teasing. “I was writing Zuzana will you make me a sandwich? What did you think?” She jerked her shirt down over her back. “Nothing,” she said, rolling off the bed. Mik caught her around the waist and dragged her back. “You didn’t think—? Oh. How embarrassing for you.” Her face was hot. He’d done it again. Jesus. Apparently she was a flit girl who dreamed of wedding gowns. “Let me go,” she said. But he didn’t. He held her. “I can’t ask you that yet,” he whispered in her ear. “I still ha...

wasn’t it? It was the Wolf.” He was not wrong, and all Karou could think of, seeing the fury on his face, was the living shawl he had made her once, the so-soft touch of moth wings on her shoulders. Once upon a time, Thiago had torn her dress, and, down from the false stars of the festival lanterns, Akiva had summoned a living shawl to cover her.

We dreamed together of the world remade, she kept thinking. It had been the most beautiful dream, and could only have arisen as it did: born of mercy and nurtured in love.

Good-bye. The word hurt. Good-bye was the last thing Akiva ever wanted to tell Karou. He

angry. It was a childish, cartoonish anger—facing Akiva, she had wanted to beat her fists at his chest and then fall against him and feel his arms close around her.

The two of them were stoic and stone-faced and ten feet apart, currently not even looking at each other, but Zuzana had the impression of a pair of magnets pretending not to be magnets.

“There is the past, and there is the future. The present is never more than the single second dividing one from the other.

“Eerie,” he repeated. “Convincing. A few times I almost forgot—” He didn’t let her finish. “Don’t forget. Not ever. Not for a second.” He drew in breath. “Please.” So much behind that word. Please don’t forget I’m not a monster. Please don’t forget what I gave up. Please don’t forget me. Karou was ashamed for having voiced her thought.

Karou finally laughed outright, and Zuzana felt pride of accomplishment. Laugh achieved. Maybe she couldn’t make Karou’s life—or love—less complicated, and maybe she didn’t have any helpful hints when it came to, oh, angel invasions or dangerous deceptions or armies that clearly just wanted to start killing each other, but she could do this at least. She could make her friend laugh.

Karou would be able to touch him. Her hands, full against his flesh, without agony. He didn’t know if she wanted to touch him, or ever would again, but the chance would be there, just in case.

That was what his eyes were like, greeting hers: a fuse that seared the air between them. He was looking at her. And as far away as he was, and with so much between them—chimaera, seraphim, all the living, all the dead—it felt like touch, that look. Like the rays of the sun. They looked at each other. They looked, and anyone might notice. Anyone might see. Angel-lover. Beast-lover. Let them see. It was madness and abandon, but after everything else, Karou couldn’t make herself care enough to look away. Akiva’s eyes were heat and light, and she wanted to stay there forever. Tomorrow, the apocalypse. Tonight, the sun.