More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
“I’m a businessman,” he’d told her. “No more, no less.” “You’re a thief, Kaz.” “Isn’t that what I just said?”
Shame holds more value than coin ever can.”
“When everyone knows you’re a monster, you needn’t waste time doing every monstrous thing.”
Many boys will bring you flowers. But someday you’ll meet a boy who will learn your favorite flower, your favorite song, your favorite sweet. And even if he is too poor to give you any of them, it won’t matter because he will have taken the time to know you as no one else does. Only that boy earns your heart.
“What do you want, then?” The old answers came easily to mind. Money. Vengeance. Jordie’s voice in my head silenced forever. But a different reply roared to life inside him, loud, insistent, and unwelcome. You, Inej. You.
“Nina is everything you say. It’s too much.” “Mmm,” Inej murmured, taking a sip from her mug. “Maybe you’re just not enough.”
“The life you live, the hate you feel—it’s poison. I can drink it no longer.”
I have been made to protect you. Only in death will I be kept from this oath. It was the vow of the drüskelle to Fjerda. And now it was Matthias’ promise to her.
She’d laughed, and if he could have bottled the sound and gotten drunk on it every night, he would have. It terrified him.
But all he could think of was Inej. She had to live. She had to have made it out of the Ice Court. And if she hadn’t, then he had to live to rescue her.
That without meaning to, he’d begun to lean on her, to look for her, to need her near. He needed to thank her for his new hat.
“They fear you as I once feared you,” he said. “As you once feared me. We are all someone’s monster, Nina.”
“I wish you could see what I do. I can hear everybody on this ship, the blood rushing through their veins. I can hear the change in Kaz’s breathing when he looks at you.” “You … you can?” “It catches every time, like he’s never seen you before.”
“I will have you without armor, Kaz Brekker. Or I will not have you at all.”
I’m going to get my money, Kaz vowed. And I’m going to get my girl. Inej could never be his, not really, but he would find a way to give her the freedom he’d promised her so long ago. Dirtyhands had come to see the rough work done.
