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Was it normal to be fascinated by the way someone slouched?
couldn’t walk the line between the decency she deserved and the violence this path demanded.
“I would come for you,” he said, and when he saw the wary look she shot him, he said it again. “I would come for you. And if I couldn’t walk, I’d crawl to you, and no matter how broken we were, we’d fight our way out together—knives drawn, pistols blazing. Because that’s what we do. We never stop fighting.”
fear is a phoenix. You can watch it burn a thousand times and still it will return.”
He’d started to think of Jesper as fearless, but maybe being brave didn’t mean being unafraid.
“You aren’t a flower, you’re every blossom in the wood blooming at once. You are a tidal wave. You’re a stampede. You are overwhelming.”
You’re weak because you’re afraid of people seeing your weakness. You’re letting shame decide who you are.
We can endure all kinds of pain. It’s shame that eats men whole.”
Nina glanced from Inej to Kaz and saw they both wore the same expression. Nina knew that look. It came after the shipwreck, when the tide moved against you and the sky had gone dark. It was the first sight of land, the hope of shelter and even salvation that might await you on a distant shore.
Two of the deadliest people the Barrel had to offer and they could barely touch each other without both of them keeling over.
And that was what destroyed you in the end: the longing for something you could never have.
Innocence. Innocence was a luxury, and Inej did not believe her Saints demanded it.
We learn to hold our heads as if we wear crowns. We learn to wring magic from the ordinary. That was how you survived when you weren’t chosen, when there was no royal blood in your veins. When the world owed you nothing, you demanded something of it anyway.
They’d been not talking about things for so long that actually speaking the truth felt like it had broken some kind of spell—not a curse, but good magic, the kind that kept everyone safe, that might preserve a kingdom under glass.
Maybe he was the same. A bullet in a chamber, spending his whole life waiting for the moment when he would have direction.
She smiled then, her eyes red, her cheeks scattered with some kind of dust. It was a smile he thought he might die to earn again.
“There’s so much in the world you don’t have to be afraid of, if you would only open your eyes.”
She would fight for him, but she could not heal him. She would not waste her life trying.
Had she really thought the world didn’t change? She was a fool. The world was made of miracles, unexpected earthquakes, storms that came from nowhere and might reshape a continent. The boy beside her. The future before her. Anything was possible.
