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.”

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

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.

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.”

“Miss what? The futility of building a life that must one day crumble to dust?” “The softness of a pillow after a hard day’s work? The smile in your daughter’s eyes as you step through the door? The joy of a lover in your arms?”

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

“All that stood between us now were two words. Strange how so much power, so much peril and promise, resides in so tiny a thing. Two little words can carry weight enough to see empires rise and kingdoms fall. 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.’

“Hearts only bruise,” the vampire murmured. “They never break.” Gabriel nodded. “So Astrid would often tell me.” “A pretty sentiment.” “A fucking lie.”