Shadow and Bone (The Shadow and Bone Trilogy, #1)

by Leigh Bardugo

I’d brought us to this. If I’d taken the stag’s life, his power would have been mine.

Ummm no. He could have killed the stag too...

Every morning, I woke with a fresh sense of guilt and shame, but also with the frustrating feeling that I was forgetting something, some message that had been clear and obvious in the dream but that hovered just outside of understanding when I woke.

Uhhhhhh what do you mean by that???

“Alina,” Genya interrupted, “the King has taken ill. The Apparat is ruling in his stead.” My heart sank. I remembered what the Darkling had said the day that I’d met the Apparat: He has his uses.

Wait.. is that the old guy? HES ACTUALLY REAL?!

“You could exile him, send him north to the permafrost until you need him.” “You’d have him spend the rest of his life in a work camp or a prison?” I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Yes.”

Uhhh thats rude

“That isn’t fair.” “Fairness!” he laughed. “Still she talks of fairness. What does fairness have to do with any of this? The people curse my name and pray for you, but you’re the one who was ready to abandon them. I’m the one who will give them power over their enemies. I’m the one who will free them from the tyranny of the King.”

I kinda love him

“Make me your villain.” He set his empty glass down and stood. “Come here.”

Why he kinda...?

I wanted to laugh. I had betrayed him? He had used me, seduced me, and now enslaved me, and I was the betrayer?

Hes seducing me right now not gonna lie...

“Tomorrow, we enter the Shadow Fold,” he whispered, his voice like a caress. “And when we do, I will feed your friend to the volcra, and you will watch him die.”

BAHAHA LMFAO I LOVE HIM

“You may say your goodbyes tonight. That is all the mercy traitors deserve.”

BAD. ASS. Hes so iconic!!

“Murderer!” I shouted. “Monster!” “All of those things.” “I hate you,” I spat. He shrugged. “You’ll tire of hate soon enough. You’ll tire of everything.”

I love this man

When he finally set me down and ambled off to the kitchen to find his lunch, I had stood there, my palm dripping blood, my head still spinning, knowing that everything had changed.

THATS HOW SHE GOT THE CUT ON HER HAND???? MY HEART!!!!

And finally, I understood why the stag had come to me every night in my dreams. I’d thought the stag was haunting me, a reminder of my failure and the price my weakness would exact. But I was wrong.

Oh god bullshit incoming...

The stag had been showing me my strength—not just the price of mercy but the power it bestowed. And mercy was something the Darkling would never understand.

I had spared the stag’s life. The power of that life belonged to me as surely as it belonged to the man who had taken it.

Wow so original

“You can’t run from me, Alina!” the Darkling shouted.

Obviously she just did!

“I never want to see you in black again.” I held his gaze. “Never,” I whispered.

They are orphans again, with no true home but each other and whatever life they can make together on the other side of the sea.