Empire of the Vampire (Empire of the Vampire, #1)

by Jay Kristoff

My mama knew herself, and there’s a fearsome power in that. Knowing exactly who you are and exactly what you’re capable of. Most folk would call it arrogance, I suppose. But most folk are fucking fools.”

The dark, sinking like a sinner to its knees. The horrors that roamed it unchecked. The tiny sparks of humanity, guttering like candles in a hungry wind, soon to be extinguished forever. “Besides, who the fuck would want to inherit an earth like this?”

“Too much hate will burn a man to cinders, Chevalier.” “Oui. But at least he’ll die warm.”

“Behold the purse in which I keep my fucks for what you think of me.”

We have to work our arses off. And we might not ever taste triumph, but at least we dared to fail.

I’d claw down the sky to carve my name into this earth.’

Despite the wine, the memory was sharp as broken glass. He feared he’d cut himself if he lingered in it too long. And yet he remained, holding tight as he could.

Through all my years in San Michon, all the blood and sweat and darkling roads I walked, I learned one of my greatest lessons sitting in that Library with those girls in the still of the night. “A life without books is a life not lived.

“They don’t shut the fuck up. They don’t just sit and listen. It’s in silence we know ourselves, vampire. It’s in stillness we hear the questions that truly matter, scratching like baby birds on the eggshells of our eyes. Who am I? What do I want? What have I become? Truth is, the questions you hear in the quiet are always the most terrifying, because most people never take the time to listen to the answers. They dance. And they sing. And they fight. And they fuck. And they drown, filling their gullets with piss and their lungs with smoke and their heads with shit so they never have to learn the truth of who the fuck they are. Put a man in a room for a hundred years with a thousand books, and he’ll know a million truths. Put him in a room for a year with silence, and he’ll know himself.”

A life without books is a life not lived.’

Your past is stone, but your future is clay. And you decide the shape of the life you’ll make.’

The only queen on this mountain is me,’ Astrid spat.

That’s the awful part about it: the worst days of your life start out just like any other.

Hearts only bruise. They never break.

“And in the end, I knew I’d not take back a breath of it. Not the bliss I knew then, nor the pain I felt now. Not all the forsaken hours I’d spent without them, the ache of my lips without Astrid’s kiss, the emptiness of my arms without Patience’s embrace. In those few moments I had them, and if only then, I was immortal. Because they were immaculate. And they were mine.