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

by Leigh Bardugo

He had seen a woman, barefoot and unflinching in her doorway, face down a row of bayonets. He knew the look of a man defending his home with nothing but a rock in his hand.

“I know you’re scared. I am, too. But we’re going to do this, and we’re going to be fine. We always are. Okay?” He smiled, and my heart gave a very loud thud in my chest.

This was the hardest part of being around him—other than the way he made my heart do clumsy acrobatics.

“You know I’d be lost without you.”

“Just you and me,” Mal said. “Really?” “It’s always just you and me, Alina.”