Mother of Death & Dawn (The War of Lost Hearts, #3)

by Carissa Broadbent

“His heart is what truly lit the fires of war, and the fire burns because of you. The decision was for all of us, yes. But the vengeance? The vengeance is for you.”

A realization came to me, one that I had been grappling with for the last ten years. There was no single moment when everything changed. No single before and after. There was just… life. A million decisions and a million consequences.

If you ever have to guess what I want, or what is best for me, it is you. Alright? I have made that decision already. I do not make it lightly. Don’t disrespect that by claiming that you know better for me than I do. I have made bad decisions before. But you are not, never have been, and never will be one of them. It is always you.”

Perhaps we didn’t need gods to find our place in something larger. Perhaps it already existed in us.

We all feel the same things, and we will still die trying to kill each other for it.”

“You terrify me because you make me want what I cannot have.”

“What are we even doing any of this for, if not for a future with the people we love?”

“Good luck, Tisaanah. Go make this world a little less broken.”

“Creation is just as dangerous as death. More dangerous, perhaps. There is nothing more dangerous than life that should not exist.”

“Do not fear death, my daughter. We all walk with one foot in each world. There is beauty in impermanence. And what sad lives we would live, if we never loved anything we would lose.”

I want to fill my last days with you. I have spent my entire life chasing knowledge, but now the only thing that I want to know is you. Every part of you. I want you to be the last thing I see when death comes for me. And I want you beside me when we build this new world.”

Love was worth destroying for.

“That is the bravest act in this world. To feel. I am often too afraid to do it myself.”

“I forbid you from dying on me, Tisaanah. I would make a pathetic widower.” “I won’t if you won’t.” The corner of his mouth quirked. “Deal.” “Deal.”

“What good is justice, if there is nobody left to witness it?”

Hope poked through the doubt like flowers sprouting in rubble.

I love that every time I look at her, I find something new, like light refracting through a thousand different shades of glass.

We have taken the hardest parts of our lives and turned them into something great.