King of Scars (King of Scars, #1)

by Leigh Bardugo

Some men deserve your mercy, Nina. Of course, Matthias. Nina watched Enok and his father lift Birgir’s body. I’ll let you know when I meet one of them.

In another life, she and Matthias might have made their home in a place like this. They would have argued about how close they should live to a city. Nina would have longed for people and excitement; Matthias would have grumbled for quiet. They would have found a way to compromise. They would have argued and kissed to make up.

“But I’m afraid I have more bad news.” Genya slumped in her chair. “There’s more?” “This is Ravka,” said Zoya. “There’s always more.”

“Please let me do it,” said Zoya. “No one will miss him.”

Wkwkwkwk

“I’d like to see if an excess of irony can actually kill a man.”

“I know you never cared for sweets.”

“But this way I’m with you, and you can keep them for me when I see you next. I know you won’t eat them yourself.”

I love you, she told him, trying not to think of the graceless sound of the soil, like the rattle of shrapnel, like sudden bursts of rain. I loved you.

“He wasn’t always a good man, but he had a good heart. A great, strong heart that should have kept beating for years and years.”

“You were never here,” she whispered, the tears coming hard now. “You were never here.” All this time, she had wanted to believe that he was still with her, but it had been her voice all along, talking herself through the silence, forcing herself to do the work of living when all she wanted was to let go. Goodbye, Matthias. No one answered. She was alone in the silence.

Progress is a river. It cannot be called back once it leaps its banks.

“Hand me that brandy,” said Zoya. “I can’t tolerate this degree of stupidity on a clear head.”

She wished she had Inej’s gift for spywork or Kaz’s gift for scheming, but she only seemed to have Jesper’s gift for bad decisions.

“You’ve spent your life only choosing the paths at which you knew you could excel. It’s made you lazy.”

“Our first job is always to survive,” she said. “I won’t apologize for it.”

Because you are strong enough to survive the fall.

‘Beware of power, Zoya. There is no amount of it that can make them love you.

Because Zoya was not kind and she was not easy. But she was already a queen.

But if you loved a thing, the work was never done.

“Stop punishing yourself for being someone with a heart. You cannot protect yourself from suffering. To live is to grieve. You are not protecting yourself by shutting yourself off from the world. You are limiting yourself, just as you did with your training.

Anything worth doing always starts as a bad idea.