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

by Jay Kristoff

ASK ME NOT if God exists, but why he’s such a prick. Even the greatest of fools can’t deny the existence of evil. We dwell in its shadow every day.

“And in sight of God and his Seven Martyrs,” the monster quoted, “I do here vow; Let the dark know my name and despair. So long as it burns, I am the flame. So long as it bleeds, I am the blade. So long as it sins, I am the saint. And I am silver.”

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.

He built things, and he broke things, my papa. And I realized that perhaps one of the things he’d broken had been me.

I felt that old, familiar hate, scorching in my chest and tightening my jaw. There’s strength to be found in hatred. There’s a courage forged only in rage. And instead of crying out or stumbling back as the men about me did, I stood with feet apart. And I drew a breath. And I raised my fucking fists.”

there’s a difference between those who swim with the flood and those who drown fighting it. And its name is Wisdom.

Gabriel tapped an empty leather pouch at his belt. “Behold the purse in which I keep my fucks for what you think of me.”

“‘I’m no princess. I’m a fucking queen.’”

But more, and truer still, there’s just no one with more to prove than the boy at the bottom of the pile. You feed a man your table scraps, he grows hungry long before he grows thin. And hunger can turn pups into wolves, and kittens into fucking lions.

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.

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.”

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

We carry the greatest burdens not on our shoulders, but in our hearts. But those taken from us never truly die. They await us in the light of God’s love.’

‘Why I’ll not give you over to him. Why I’ll not lose one more drop to this. Why I must see this through to the end. Because I miss them, like a piece of me is missing. And I love them, like love is all I was. And there is nothing I’d not do, no depth to which I’d not sink, no price I wouldn’t pay to have them back and here with me. Because they were my all and my everything.

And by the terror in his final, croaking wail, I like to believe the dread emperor of hell itself laid claim his wretched fucking soul.