The Bone Shard Emperor (The Drowning Empire, #2)

by Andrea Stewart

“I would have done worse than that,” Ranami said, her throat tight. “I would have cut you for a piece of bread if someone had told me I could have one off you.”

“Watching my father and reading and listening to you . . . if there’s one thing it’s all taught me it’s that if I try too hard to hold on to power at the expense of everything else, in the end that’s all I’ll have: power.” “But that’s like winning the battle and losing the war.”

You want Lin gone. Did you ever consider they could be different from their fathers? And what of me? My parents abandoned me. Am I now doomed to abandon any child I adopt? Why don’t you think things can be different? What can’t you let go?”

“As soon as you show them what you are, do you think they will follow you? They don’t care about you. I’ve seen the way they treat you. Why are you standing up for them? Why are you trying to be like them?”

Nisong slammed her cudgel into another soldier, feeling ribs crack beneath the force of the blow. Was this what vengeance cost? Was this the price of bringing justice to her enemies? She’d paid in blood already.

Nisong thought herself skilled with bone shard magic? Well, I had been up against Bayan, I had taken down my father’s four greatest constructs, I had faced Shiyen Sukai himself and claimed his title. No matter that Nisong and I were meant to be the same person. I’d worked at this longer than she had.

“They know what you are now,” Ragan said. “Do you still want to stay here and protect them? Why fight me instead of coming with me? Let the constructs and the mortals fight. They’ll turn on you as soon as the battle is over.”

Gio scoffed. “So the spy just hadn’t stopped being a spy; he has become a turncoat. I should have expected as much. What did she do? Offer you money? A palace?”

The door slammed shut behind him. I was left alone with a book and the echo of Dione’s presence – the greatest of the Alanga, and my freshly made enemy.

I came to understand that leaving you in a cell does nothing. It doesn’t help the people of Nephilanu; it doesn’t help you. You don’t care about what you’ve done. You don’t want to make amends. Instead, you’ve used your position here, your closeness to your daughter, to do harm. You’ve been feeding information to the Shardless Few.”