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Through a clearing in the swirling mass, a cluster of stars could be seen. He couldn’t help thinking that they gazed down at her.
Still, the image haunted his dreams throughout the night: a lovely girl gazing at the stars, and the stars who gazed back.
“Only an idiot would walk in a house made of glass.”
“Guards are of no use in a library.” Oh, how wrong he was! Libraries were full of ideas—perhaps the most dangerous and powerful of all weapons.
“Celaena.” He stopped a few feet from the guards. His eyes were rich, molten brown. “Yes?” Her heartbeat steadied. “You look rather pretty today,” was all he said before the doors opened and they walked forward. Celaena raised her chin as they entered the crowded room.
He sometimes felt that she looked at him the way a cat regards a mouse. He just wondered how long it would take for her to pounce.
He wished for the months to fly by, for her to be appointed Champion, and then, once her years of servitude were over, to be gone.
There was something great and deadly concealed within her, and he didn’t like it. He’d be ready—when the time came, he’d be waiting. He just wondered which one of them would survive.
He felt as if there were something inside him that didn’t fit in with their merriment, with their willing ignorance of the world outside the castle. It went beyond his title.
and sometimes the absence of him hit her so hard that she forgot how to breathe. She touched a lower note. It was deep and throbbing, full of sorrow and anger.
She was surprised that her hands had not forgotten, that somewhere in her mind, after a year of darkness and slavery, music was still alive and breathing. That somewhere, between the notes, was Sam. She forgot about time as she drifted between pieces, voicing the unspeakable, opening old wounds, playing and playing as the sound forgave and saved her.
He wouldn’t mind listening forever. He had come here with the intention of embarrassing a snide assassin, and had instead found a young woman pouring her secrets into a pianoforte.
“I don’t think anyone who plays like that can be just a criminal. It seems like you have a soul,”
“No. I can survive well enough on my own—if given proper reading material.”
I’m already at your father’s disposal. I won’t become his son’s jester, too.”
He couldn’t banish her heart-wrenching music from his mind, even when he burned his mother’s list of eligible maidens, even when he read a book long into the night, even when he finally fell asleep.
She’d always been so sure she’d make it. But, if she were honest with herself, Celaena wasn’t so sure anymore.
all too well
Taylor what you doing here?
“But why is it so wrong for me to want to know more? Like how you became an assassin—and what things were like for you before that.” “It’s not interesting.” “I wouldn’t find it boring.”
“because when I hear it, I … I lose myself within myself, if that makes sense. I become empty and full all at once, and I can feel the whole earth roiling around me. When I play, I’m not … for once, I’m not destroying. I’m creating.”
You could help create a world where true love isn’t needed to secure a happy ending.”
With each day, he felt the barriers melting. He let them melt. Because of her genuine laugh, because he caught her one afternoon sleeping with her face in the middle of a book, because he knew that she would win.
She’d survived Endovier, and yet could still laugh.
it terrified him to see her down there, a hand’s breadth from Dorian’s unprotected throat, what terrified him even more was that he trusted her. And he didn’t know what that meant about himself.
There was good in people—deep down, there was always a shred of good. There had to be.
He suddenly felt the urge to kiss her—hard—upon the mouth. But this—what he felt, it could never be real. Because once the ball was over, she would go back to being an assassin, and he would still be a prince. Dorian swallowed hard. For tonight, though … He held her closer. Everyone transformed into mere shadows on the wall.
Consequences be damned. He’d find a way to make it work; he’d find a way to be with her. He had to. He had leapt from the cliff. He could only wait for the net.
“We all bear scars, Dorian. Mine just happen to be more visible than most.
There was a darkness in his eyes that felt cold and foreign, like the gaps between the stars. Could one man destroy a world?
He saw her face each time he closed his eyes. She haunted his thoughts, made him wish to do grand and wonderful things in her name, made him want to be a man who deserved to wear a crown.
he should never have kissed her. Because now, no matter how he might have once envisioned his future, or who he thought he’d spend it with, he couldn’t imagine being with anyone else—wanting anyone else.
I will not be afraid,
Light and darkness. Life and death. Where do I fit in?
I will not be afraid.
“Do not be afraid.”
He was done with politics and intrigue. He loved her, and no empire, no king, and no earthly fear would keep him from her. No, if they tried to take her from him, he’d rip the world apart with his bare hands. And for some reason, that didn’t terrify him.
“I knew you’d win the moment I met you,”
no matter how frivolous and twisted that competition was, I’m grateful it brought you into my life. As long as I live, I’ll always be thankful for that.”
“Because there are people who need you to save them as much as you yourself need to be saved,”
