The Priory of the Orange Tree (The Roots of Chaos, #1)

by Samantha Shannon

“Reading,” Ead said lightly. “A dangerous pastime.” Truyde looked up at her, sharp-eyed. “You mock me.” “By no means. There is great power in stories.” “All stories grow from a seed of truth,” Truyde said. “They are knowledge after figuration.”

He could envision no greater torment than feasting with a circle of dead braggarts for eternity.

“In darkness, we are naked. Our truest selves. Night is when fear comes to us at its fullest, when we have no way to fight it,” Ead continued. “It will do everything it can to seep inside you. Sometimes it may succeed—but never think that you are the night.”

No woman should be made to fear that she was not enough.

“Piety can turn the power-hungry into monsters,” Ead said. “They can twist any teaching to justify their actions.”

He had built his religion like a wall around his shame.

“My heart knows your song, as yours knows mine. And I will always come back to you.”

“To be kin to a dragon,” Nayimathun said, “you must not only have a soul of water. You must have the blood of the sea, and the sea is not always pure. It is not any one thing. There is darkness in it, and danger, and cruelty. It can raze great cities with its rage. Its depths are unknowable; they do not see the touch of the sun. To be a Miduchi is not to be pure, Tané. It is to be the living sea. That is why I chose you. You have a dragon’s heart.”