Ruin and Rising (The Shadow and Bone Trilogy, #3)

by Leigh Bardugo

“Suffering is cheap as clay and twice as common. What matters is what each man makes of it.

Maybe love was superstition, a prayer we said to keep the truth of loneliness at bay. I tilted my head back. The stars looked like they were close together, when really they were millions of miles apart. In the end, maybe love just meant longing for something impossibly bright and forever out of reach.

But Ana Kuya used to tell me that hope was tricky like water. Somehow it always found a way in.

The names they gave were false ones, though the vows they made were true.

They had an ordinary life, full of ordinary things—if love can ever be called that.