Little Thieves (Little Thieves, #1)

by Margaret Owen

Then, incredibly, he places a hand on one of the stanchions sectioning off the debtors’ line, and executes the most premeditated and ungainly attempt at a casual lean I have ever seen in my entire life.

I forgot how bone-deep the exhaustion goes when you’re living in fear.

state.” For absolutely no reason whatsoever, I think about the knife in my boot. And the bottle of arsenic in my vanity.

It’s downright inspirational, the way the artist has managed to capture his blend of entitlement and constipation at such a tender age.

see myself for what I am: a scared girl, alone in a cruel world, abandoned by family and friend, who would rather turn herself to bloodstained stone than let anyone get close enough to leave another scar.

This is how I learn that Junior Prefect Emeric Conrad has a gift for understatement,

“You were dying,” she says, as if explaining it to a small child, “very bad, a lot.”

He lets out a shaky breath, and I don’t know if it’s a laugh, but it might be in the same genus, and I can work with that.

Any attempt at articulating that is going to come out as a mortal scream.