More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
“Nina, I am with you because you let me be with you. There is no greater honor than to stand by your side.”
“Meeting you was a disaster.” She raised a brow. “Thank you.” Djel, he was terrible at this. He stumbled on, trying to make her understand. “But I am grateful every day for that disaster. I needed a cataclysm to shake me from the life I knew. You were an earthquake, a landslide.” “I,” she said, planting a hand on her hip, “am a delicate flower.” “You aren’t a flower, you’re every blossom in the wood blooming at once. You are a tidal wave. You’re a stampede. You are overwhelming.”
There is no one I want more; there is nothing I want more than to be overwhelmed by you.”
“But please, tell me more about Fjerdan girls.” “They speak quietly. They don’t engage in flirtations with every single man they meet.” “I flirt with the women too.”
“I’m not proper, Matthias.” “I am aware of this.” Miserably, keenly, hungrily aware. “And I’m sorry to inform you, but you’re not proper either.” His gaze dropped to her now. “I—” “How many rules have you broken since you met me? How many laws? They won’t be the last. Nothing about us will ever be proper,”
“Why do you keep staring at him?” Kuwei said. “I look just like him. You could look at me.” “I’m not staring at him,” protested Jesper.
“You were angry. Angry wears off. I needed you righteous.”
Zowa. It simply meant “blessed.” That was the word Jesper’s mother used instead of Grisha.
No mourners, no funerals. Another way of saying good luck. But it was something more. A dark wink to the fact that there would be no expensive burials for people like them, no marble markers to remember their names, no wreaths of myrtle and rose.
Would she miss this place? This crowded mess of a city she’d come to know so well, that had somehow become her home? She felt certain she would. So tonight, she would perform for her city, for the citizens of Ketterdam, even if they did not know to applaud.
