More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Jay Kristoff
Read between
June 16 - July 14, 2025
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. The best of us rise above it, the worst of us swallow it whole, but we all of us wade hip-deep through it, every moment of our lives. Curses and blessings fall on the cruel and just alike. 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 if there is a hell, mustn’t there also be a heaven? And if there is a heaven, then can’t we ask it why?
...more
“She wore nothing save the wind. Her hair was silken tar, flowing about her body like ribbons on a moonsless tide. Her skin was pale as the stars in a yesterday sky, her beauty born of spiders’ songs and the dreams of hungry wolves.
“I don’t like to lose, coldblood.” “The sin of pride serves you well, then.” “See, I never understood that. Why pride is looked on as an evil. You work hard at something you’re not born good at? Damn right you should be fucking proud. There’s nothing comes of quitting besides the knowledge you didn’t finish.”
There are three ways men view the women of the world, Gabriel. Enemies to be overcome. Prizes to be won. Or as people. My advice is choose the latter, my love. Lest they begin considering you the former.
Well, then, it seems the Almighty gifted you a functional brain. Huzzah and hurrah. They seem in rather short supply around this fucking place.’
‘Why do I feel like I’m striking a bargain with the devil?’ “‘Oh, I’m twice as crafty as the devil, Gabriel de León. But we’ll not be striking anything lest you ask me nicely.’
Gabriel fell silent, refilling his drink. Lost in remembrance of an angel’s eyes, a devil’s smile.
Sweet fucking Redeemer,’ I gasped, spinning in fright. “‘Flattering. But I prefer when you call me Majesty.’
I did warn you. I’m twice as crafty as the devil.
Why do you want to learn the sword, Sisternovice?’ “‘Not knowing how to use one is a good way to get killed by one, Initiate.’
‘When Mama insisted I be schooled in the arts, I’m not sure she imagined I’d be carving silver into halfbreed vampire boys’ skins before sending them off to die in the dark.’
My little hellion…’ I whispered. “My eyes were burning as I crushed my baby sister’s letter to my chest.
Oh, pack that schoolboy smile a lunch and send it walking,’
Of course. A letter unanswered is like a kiss ignored.
“Poets are wankers,” Gabriel sighed. “And minstrels are just poets who’re allowed to strum themselves in public. It’s a self-important prat who believes his thoughts are worth putting to parchment, let alone writing a fucking ballad about.”
“Music is a truth beyond telling. A bridge between strangest souls. Two men who speak not a word of each other’s tongues may yet feel their hearts soar likewise at the same refrain.
Truth is, most men write songs so they can hear themselves sing. And the rest sing not for the song, but for the applause at the end.
You know what most men don’t do enough of?” “Tell me, Silversaint.” “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
...more
“The only thing worse than a fool is a fool who thinks himself wise.”
You know, someone once told me a man who names his blade is a man who dreams others will know his name one day.’
Do I look a fucking mushroom to you? You’re the people who asked me to this dance, so if you plan to keep me in the dark and feed me shite all day—’
But Need and Want are two different masters entire.
After they’ve passed around the collection plate, of course. When your crops fail or your cancer spreads or whatever else you’ve begged him for doesn’t come to pass. That’s the solace they’ll offer. It’s God’s will, they’ll tell you. Part of the divine plan. “‘What they don’t point out is, if he has a plan? There’s no sense praying for anything. If His will be done is the golden rule, then God’s going to do what he wants, regardless of how hard you beg him. And imagine, just for a second, the sense of entitlement it takes to ask him for anything in the first place. The fucking ego you’d need
...more
See, that’s the grift of it all. That’s the genius. You get what you pray for? Huzzah, God fucking loves you. But your prayers go unanswered?’ I snapped my fingers. ‘Just wasn’t part of the plan.’
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.’
“I used to wonder what it was that drove people like him to become the monsters they became. If it was a consequence of all that time, maybe—the need to indulge ever-darker desires, just to stave off the crushing boredom of forever. But you live long enough, you look into the mundane murk of people’s souls often enough, you see Danton didn’t really become anything. He’d just had the shackles of consequence removed. Give someone the power to do anything they want, and they’ll do exactly that. That’s the horrifying part—the only thing holding some folk back from the worst atrocities they can
...more
I’ve been thinking,’ she declared. “‘I wondered what that grinding noise was.’
How does a man pray?’ “‘I don’t know. I don—’ “‘He prays on his knees, Gabriel.’ “And then she pushed herself back up onto the table, slid her hands over my shoulders, pulling me closer, down. The taste of her blood crashed and burned upon my tongue, and her eyes looked deep into mine as she whispered the words that made me completely and finally fall. “‘Pray to me.’
There is a time for grief, and a time for songs, and a time to recall with fondness all that has been and gone. But there is a time for killing too. There is a time for blood, and a time for rage, and a time to close your eyes and become the thing heaven wants you to be.
I felt him on that mountainside, Greyhand,’ Aaron said. ‘Bathed in his holy light. God stood with us, Baptiste and me, as we faced down a dark that seeks to consume all men. All men. And if your God would name my love a sin, then he’s no God I know.’
Hearts only bruise. They never break.’
I asked myself if goodness could come of sin, and if so, what sin was at all. I asked myself if God loved us, how it was he could hate that we found love ourselves. How he could allow such suffering to go unanswered. How he could have deemed it wise to create a world that cradled horrors such as these.
‘If we spend all our lives in darkness, is it any wonder when darkness starts to live in us?’
‘But if you do want me, Gabriel de León, then say it. Because only a coward would cherish the wanting of a thing and yet send it away. And I will not give my heart to a coward. I will give it to a lion.’
“Your voice will never feel so tiny as when you’re screaming at God,” he whispered.
She knows what a world like this does to young girls.’ “‘There’s no one who loses more sleep over that than a father, girl. Believe me.’ “‘If that were true, you’d never ask why I pretended to be a boy.’
You ruined my magik coat, hero.’ “‘That coat almost got you killed. Again. And it was as magik as a pig’s arsehole.’ “‘You’re wrong.’ She stared across the flames, shaking her head. ‘Oh, it wouldn’t stop an enchanted blade or let me walk across worlds or anything impressive enough for poor Bel to write a song about.’ She hung her head then, scratching at well-chewed fingernails. ‘You want to know what that coat did?’ “‘I suppose you’ll tell me, regardless.’ “‘It let me walk a dark street without having to watch over my shoulder. It let me step into a room and not feel eyes crawling every inch
...more
‘I’m a bastard, not a monster.’
“HERE’S A TRUTH about sword fighting, coldblood: Even if you’re bad at it, when the person you’re fighting doesn’t have one? You’re still going to be pretty good.
What I can tell you is that the only heaven I’ve found in all this hell was in the people I loved. Friends. Famille. So, you need to keep on thinking the best of folk, despite seeing the worst of us. Hold on to that fire inside you, girl. Because it makes you shine. And once it goes out, it goes out forever. Know you’ll make mistakes. Understand that it will bruise—hell, it might even break. But don’t lock it up inside your chest.’ “I reached across and squeezed her hand. “‘Aim your heart at the fucking world.’
you treat me different now you know I’m not a boy.’ “‘No. I treat you different now I know you’re not a cunt.’
Come on, old man!’ “‘I’m thirty-fucking-two!’ “She snapped a branch off a nearby tree, held it aloft. ‘Walking stick for you!’ “‘Little bitch.’
Did that ever strike you as odd?’ “‘I’m not sure what you mean.’ “‘The wheel.’ I nodded to it. ‘Why they chose that as the symbol for the One Faith.’ “‘It’s a symbol of the Redeemer’s sacrifice. The offering that laid the foundation for his church on this earth, and our salvation. By this blood, shall they have life eternal.’ “‘But doesn’t it strike you as a little morbid? Seems to me maybe they should’ve found something that celebrated the days he lived. The words he said. Instead, the symbol of his church is the thing that killed him.’ I shook my head. ‘Always struck me as strange.’
Brother, there is nothing to forgive,’ he said, putting his hand on my shoulder. ‘I know you speak from hurt, and though I fear the cause, I’ll not add to it by asking for its name. I’ll not tell you what to believe, either. Each man’s heart is his own, and in the end, only he has the filling of it. But I tell you this, and if never you have listened to me before, by all the love you bear for me, I beg you listen now. Because I see a shadow on you, brother. And I am afraid.’
It matters not what you hold faith in. But you must hold faith in something.’
May I come in, Gabriel?’ “All that stood between us now were two words. So much power. So much peril. 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’? “Two little words. “You mustn’t. “No choice. “My baby. “‘Come in,’ I told him.
And with the smoke of the fires I lit rising to the sky behind me, I dragged on the shape of what I’d been, and I remembered; there is a time for grief, and a time for songs, and a time to recall with fondness all that has been and gone. “But there is a time for killing too. “There is a time for blood. “And a time for rage. “And a time to close your eyes and become the thing hell wants you to be. “And so. I did.”
No such thing as a happy ending.’
“I felt a wave of nostalgia, that sweet poison seeping into my heart, that vain and selfish desire to dwell among glories of the past, when days were better and simpler, when all the world seemed bright, tinted rose-red in the halls of memory. But it’s a fool who looks with more fondness to the days behind than the ones ahead. And it’s a man drenched in defeat who sings that sad refrain; that things were better then.
And in returning to this place, I felt like a man who’d found an old coat he wore as a boy, slipping it onto his shoulders and discovering it no longer fits. “Sad for youth lost. “Proud that he has grown. “But most of all, uncomfortable.
