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

by Jay Kristoff

For every prayer heeded, ten thousand go unanswered. And saints suffer alongside the sinners, prey for monsters spat straight from the belly of hell.

But I knew his fists like I knew my name. And I thought it love.

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.”

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

“There’s no misery so deep as one you face by yourself. No nights darker than ones you spend alone. But you can learn to live with any weight. Your scars grow thick enough, they become armor.

hands. I could remember them closing around mine when I was a little boy, big and warm, showing me how to set a snare or swing a sword. I remembered them curling into knots and falling like rain. He built things, and he broke things, my papa. And I realized that perhaps one of the things he’d broken had been me.

a boy who has woken from a nightmare to discover the nightmare is him.

And if I have the right of it, these will be the last words I’ll ever speak upon this earth. So if this is to be my last confession, and you my priest, trust that I know how best to impart the tally of my own fucking sins.

“I could see her joy, the relief of faith rewarded, and that faith itself, undimmed by toil or time. And for the briefest moment, I envied her more than anyone I’d ever met.

‘I’d tear the wings off an angel to fly this cage. I’d claw down the sky to carve my name into this earth.’

‘What a world this would be, were it not held wholly and solely in the grip of stubborn old men.’

!!!

But Chloe Sauvage was no lunatic. She was something twice as dangerous. Something I was too back then. But will never be again.” “And what is that, Silversaint?” Gabriel met the vampire’s eyes, a bitter smile on his lips. “A believer.”

Two little words can begin the end of everything. How many hearts have been made complete by words so small as I do? How many more have been shattered with a breath as tiny as It’s over? Little sounds that reshape or unmake your entire world, like great spells of old to redraw the very lines by which you see yourself and all else about you. Two little words. “‘Forgive me.’ “‘Do it.’ “‘I can’t.’ “‘You must.’

‘It’s the lowest kind of man who raises a fist to his child and calls it love. And it’s the worst kind of tyrant who demands you adore him above all others.’ I

A life without books is a life not lived.’

You don’t want to be a hero. Heroes die unpleasant deaths, far from home and hearth.’

One or two moments of heroism—that’s what the wise seek. One or two heartbeats that last a lifetime. And this is one. A moment to bring a smile to your face on your deathbed. A moment that others will rue they were not here to share. A moment of which you will say, many years and miles from here, that then, if never again, I stood among heroes. And I was one.’

we were alive and we were breathing, and even in darkest nights, that can be cause enough for triumph.

Aim your heart at the fucking world.’

Who the fuck told you I was a hero?’

“I looked at this girl beside me. My hill to die on. My shoulder to cry on. I’d no clue what I believed, save only that I believed in her.