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.

other than the way he made my heart do clumsy acrobatics.

Odinakovost was the “thisness” of a thing that made it the same as everything else. Etovost was the “thatness” of a thing that made it different from everything else. Odinakovost connected Grisha to the world, but it was etovost that gave them an affinity for something like air, or blood, or in my case, light.

“I’ve been waiting for you a long time, Alina,” he said. “You and I are going to change the world.”

“Why can a Grisha possess but one amplifier? I will answer this question instead: What is infinite? The universe and the greed of men.”

It was time to let go. That day on the Shadow Fold, Mal had saved my life, and I had saved his. Maybe that was meant to be the end of us.

“The problem with wanting,” he whispered, his mouth trailing along my jaw until it hovered over my lips, “is that it makes us weak.”

Put on your pretty clothes and wait for the next kiss, the next kind word. Wait for the stag. Wait for the collar. Wait to be made into a murderer and a slave.

“Mal,” I whispered into the night. “What?” “Thanks for finding me.” I wasn’t sure if I was dreaming, but somewhere in the dark, I thought I heard him whisper, “Always.” I let sleep take me.

I never really fit in the way that you did. I never really belonged anywhere.” “You belonged with me,” he said quietly.

“Did you miss me, Alina? Did you miss me when you were gone?” “Every day,” I said honestly. “I missed you every hour.

I’ve risked my life for you. I’ve walked half the length of Ravka for you, and I’d do it again and again and again just to be with you, just to starve with you and freeze with you and hear you complain about hard cheese every day. So

don’t tell me we don’t belong together,” he said fiercely. He was very close now, and my heart was suddenly hammering in my chest. “I’m sorry it took me so long to see you, Alina. But I see you now.”

The moment our lips met, I knew with pure and piercing certainty that I would have waited for him forever.

This was his soul made flesh, the truth of him laid bare in the blazing sun, shorn of mystery and shadow. This was the truth behind the handsome face and the miraculous powers, the truth that was the dead and empty space between the stars, a wasteland peopled by frightened monsters.

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.