More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
She planned her revenge down to every rune.”
Sometimes I’m afraid I no longer recognize my sister.”
I am sorry about many things, but I am not sorry about this.
Even in death, the great equalizer, important people pushed up better shrubbery than the rest, I thought.
Whatever powers bone witches could wield, they cannot bring back silver heartsglass.
But it is like droplets of blood, dripping into a bowl of fresh spring water, I thought. Mix it well enough, and you can’t see the blood. But would you drink it? Let the taste run down your throat? How can one know liquid so clear could also bear such a taint?
“I wish Fox and I could come with you,” the princess murmured to me with a sigh. “But there are no emperors in Istera to be accidentally engaged to, Your Highness,” said Zoya.
“You have a very lovely mouth, Zoya. It would look even lovelier if it remained shut for the rest of the day.”
“Quit dillydallying,” Althy said from atop the dragon. “Or we’ll be all day trading good-byes.”
The Filipino long goodbyes hahaha
“Tea,” Althy said, “focus. Remember that we have a purpose in coming here.” “Yes,” I found myself saying, “to read everything we can get our hands on.” “Oh dear,” murmured my asha-sister. “We’ve lost her.”
“But they have a complete history of asha here,” I whined. “Vernasha of the Roses kept a diary that was preserved!” How could Althy be so flippant surrounded by so much knowledge? Vernasha was the famous asha who founded Kion, so surely she would understand my interest. “There’s also a complete manuscript listing the adventures of the Five Great Heroes’ epic in greater detail than anything I’ve read, and it’s more than two thousand pages! Look, this is Rashnu’s final journal, recounting his life after the other Great Heroes perished at the Ring of Worship—” “Tea.”
This is too damn relateable
“You can’t honor the past if you don’t know what that past is. I would much rather know the truth than live in ignorant bliss, even if it destroys all I’ve come to believe. Tradition isn’t always honorable.
To venerate women, they said, is to diminish men. How one can lead to the other is a question they have not yet answered,
“Yes,” she said. After another pause: “And no. I miss what we used to be.
“To be perfect without suffering means no change. If you know neither hurt nor hardship, then you will not know the strength they can summon within a person. What is life’s meaning if you cannot distinguish between happiness and sorrow?”
It is a terrible thing to destroy a book in order to better live a lie.
The Kion oracle once told me that my writings would one day change the world. I wished I had asked her if I would change it for the better or for the worse…
I intend to reframe the legend to suit our purposes. A harmless lie is better than a harmful truth. Better to wield strength in an imperfect land than to be powerless in a perfect one.
They would cling to their faith rather than see it shattered.
Once done, perform the rune one final time over the person to awaken his demons.
Who awakened the rune??
“What good is half a century of experience when I’ve got nothing to show for it but an old man’s regret?”
stubborn tilt to her chin.
What does this even mean?
The more years standing in between their lives and mine, the fewer chances there were for them to intersect.
“This isn’t as harebrained a scheme as you might think, even if Zoya thought it up.”
people tend to believe those who are in charge, no matter how ridiculous or corrupt they may be,”
we have been conditioned to obey authority in subtle manners, Zoya. You would be surprised at how very few actually speak up in the face of injustice.”
“Wouldn’t you worry that, by joining those hags, you’d become a hag yourself?”
shouldn’t the rules be changed, rather than the enforcer of those rules?”
“Trust your enemies little,” it whispered, “and trust your friends even less.”
“Sometimes the past is all we know.”
“Guilt feels heavier on good men’s shoulders.”
revealed nothing and suggested everything.
All we want is the chance to live a full life.
they have cannibalized Hollow Knife’s words, bent and shifted them into their own making, so that his teachings matched their greed.
For me to answer, you must first ask the question.
Black heartsglass is as much of you as it was when it had been silver. It is what you choose to do with it that matters most.”
What was the point? My brother wasn’t going to believe me tomorrow any more than he did today. But I nodded, because he was right about one thing: I was tired of talking.
Every time I hesitate, give you the benefit of the doubt, we wind up losing people we both love—Polaire,
Some days it would be so much easier to close my eyes and never wake…
maybe I will save the bits and pieces of myself that need rescuing too.”
It felt like I was in a series of cyclic chapters that only foretold the same endings, no matter what forks in the road I faced.
“How can you be so sure of me when not even I am?”
“Sometimes people do things because they want to, and not because they make sense.”
“We never discuss politics unless we’re at least half-drunk, Lord Kalen. That’s how we maintain our sanity.”
“How did you convince him of your devotion, Lady Tea?” an armor-clad woman asked. “I’m still not quite sure. But I remember the day he convinced me of mine.” “What was it, if I may be so bold?” “I saw him bathing in a river with his shirt off.”
“And if anyone here so much as touches a hair on his adorable head, I shall pull out their beating hearts and force them to consume every last vein,”
“I wanted you to like me. Nobody likes me after I’ve sung for them.” “You sang it terribly, and I like you just fine.”
You don’t die from regret, but people keep dying for it in my place.
I wanted to feel, for one brief second, how it would be if I were what I looked like, instead of what I really am.
