The Prisoner’s Throne (The Stolen Heir Duology, #2)

by Holly Black

“That you’re terrifying?” he asked, his drawl becoming exaggeratedly languorous, almost a purr. “I adore it.”

It’s easy to make someone look foolish if you’re willing to play the fool.

There is a relief in letting go, allowing the future and past to drop away, to become someone without a hope or fear beyond this moment. Someone for whom there was only ever this fight and there will only ever be this fight.

That’s what it was to want to possess another, being unwilling to let them go, even in death. To murder them when you decided it was time for them to be replaced, so that you could keep them still.

“We do not love because people deserve it—nor would I want to be loved because I was the most deserving of some list of candidates. I want to be loved for my worst self as well as my best. I want to be forgiven my flaws.”

he understands that familial love isn’t guaranteed, and even when you have it, it doesn’t always keep you safe.

Cardan seems distracted by the walnut itself. “Oh, very well, I will be the one to ask the obvious question—what have you there?”

If Cardan leads with his cruel, cold charm, Jude’s power comes from the promise that if anyone crosses her, she simply cuts their throat. It is a brutal reputation, but would she, as a human, have been afforded respect for anything gentler?

“You are recovering from being stabbed—or rather, throwing yourself on a knife.” “You would have done the same for me,” he says airily. “I would not,” Jude snaps. “Liar,” Cardan says fondly.