A Deadly Education (The Scholomance, #1)

by Naomi Novik

She says it’s too easy to call people evil instead of their choices, and that lets people justify making evil choices, because they convince themselves that it’s okay because they’re still good people overall, inside their own heads.

I know what the prophecy says because he translated it for Mum, repeated it a dozen times over trying to persuade her, because he didn’t know Mum well enough to understand that the one thing she’ll never go for is the lesser evil. So instead she took her greater evil back home and raised me and loved me and protected me with all her might, and now here I am, ready to begin my destined career any day I like.

The rotten thing about having Mum as a mum is, I know how to stop being angry. I’ve been taught any number of ways to manage anger, and they really work. What she’s never been able to teach me is how to want to manage it. So I go on seething and raging and knowing the whole time that it’s my own fault, because I do know how to stop.

I love having existential crises at bedtime, it’s so restful. I lay awake for at least an hour after the final bell, staring furiously at the blue flicker of the gaslight by the door.

And they didn’t stop at safety, either. They wanted comfort, and then they wanted luxury, and then they wanted excess, and every step of the way they still wanted to be safe, even as they made themselves more and more of a tempting target, and the only way they could stay safe was to have enough power to keep everyone off that wanted what they had.