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

by Leigh Bardugo

There is no greater power than faith, and there will be no greater army than one driven by it.”

“You were meant for more than me, and I’ll die fighting to give it to you. But please don’t ask me to pretend it’s easy.”

🥺

“Everyone okay?” Mal asked. “Never better,” said Genya shakily. David raised his hand. “I’ve been better.”

I didn’t want to grieve anymore, to feel loss or guilt, or worry.

“That’s hardly limiting,” he said. “Alina, I’ll be back to fetch you for dinner, but should you grow restless, do feel free to run screaming from the room or take a dagger to her. Whatever seems most fitting at the time.” “Are you still here?” snapped Baghra. “I go but hope to remain in your heart,” he said solemnly. Then he winked and disappeared.

🥹😭

“I don’t reserve my friendship for perfect people.

David bunched up his shoulders and said, “I know metal.” “What does that have to do with anything?” Genya cried. David furrowed his brow. “I … I don’t understand half of what goes on around me. I don’t get jokes or sunsets or poetry, but I know metal.”

“Beauty was your armor. Fragile stuff, all show. But what’s inside you? That’s steel. It’s brave and unbreakable. And it doesn’t need fixing.”

“It’s a promise to be better than I was,” he said. “It’s a vow that if I can’t be anything else to you, at least I can be a weapon in your hand.”

He laughed then. “I know I’m supposed to say something noble—I want a united Ravka free from the Fold. I want the Darkling in the ground, where he can never hurt you or anyone else again.” He gave a rueful shake of his head. “But I guess I’m the same selfish ass I’ve always been. For all my talk of vows and honor, what I really want is to put you up against that wall and kiss you until you forget you ever knew another man’s name. So tell me to go, Alina. Because I can’t give you a title or an army or any of the things you need.”

my heart :"):

There were old wants too, to be loved for who I was, not what I could do, to lie in a meadow with a boy’s arms around me and watch the wind move the clouds.

If he finds the firebird, we may just stand a chance.” “And if he doesn’t?” Nikolai shrugged. “We put on our best clothes and die like heroes.”

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.

“I don’t need any of that. Just…” He dropped Nikolai’s hand and looked away. “Deserve her.”

“Know that I loved you,” she said to the Darkling. “Know that it was not enough.”

None of them were easy or soft or simple. They were like me, nursing hurts and hidden wounds, all broken in different ways.

“He watches her the way Harshaw watches fire. Like he’ll never have enough of her. Like he’s trying to capture what he can before she’s gone.”

You keep storing up all that anger and grief. Eventually it spills over. Or you drown in it.”

“I know you don’t believe as Tamar and I do,” he said, “but no matter how this ends, I’m glad our faith brought us to you.”

“If you make him believe he’s less now, he’ll never know he can be more.”

“But no matter who or what I was, I would have been yours.”

“You are all I’ve ever wanted,” he said. “You are the whole of my heart.”

What is infinite? The universe and the greed of men.

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