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

by Andrea Stewart

In the end, I wanted to live more than I wanted him to love me.”

All the old hurt welled up within me, a wound that never quite scabbed over. I wondered if I would live with that pain for the rest of my life.

“Is there a sliding scale of good? And if so, where do my actions fall? I’m trying to do better, but I don’t quite know what that looks like.”

She’d closed off her heart to Wailun long ago. Sometimes, though, it felt as though all she’d done was close the shutters to a window behind which a storm raged. The water still seeped in and rotted the wood.

Old men always think they know better than everyone else, even when the world has long since changed around them.”