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

by Holly Black

If one of them asked for the sun, he’d better figure out how to pluck it from the sky without getting burned.

Oak turned his attention to Cardan again, and this time the High King met his eyes. Cardan’s eyebrows rose. There was a challenge in his gaze and the promise of lazy cruelty. Game on.

“That must be what you like about me.” “That you’re terrifying?” he asked, his drawl becoming exaggeratedly languorous, almost a purr. “I adore it.”

“I am not like our mother, either,” Oak says. “You never met her,” the fox tells him. “How do you know if you’re like her or not?” To that, Oak has no answer. He doesn’t want to be like her. He wanted people to love him a normal amount. But it was true that he wanted everyone to love him. “You’re going to die like her. And like me. Murdered by your own lover.”

Love can be lost, and I am done with losing.”

“I am not the person you believe me to be,” she says in a rush. He turns back to her, surprised. “That girl you knew. Inside her was always this great rage, this emptiness. And now it’s all I am.”

“And do you know how to tell the fight is over? All your enemies are dead. Understand?”

“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.”

“It is more the feeling that there is a part of me I have left somewhere and I am always looking for.”

“I could have loved him better,” Hyacinthe says. “And I could have better believed in his love.”

“Perhaps I have had enough of vengeance. Perhaps I need not make things so hard.”

“You don’t understand.” She wears a pained expression. “And I can’t explain.” “Then it seems we are at an impasse.”

“They’re all friendly snakes until they bite you.”

until this moment he didn’t understand the horror of having all the people who loved you best in the world look at you as though you were a stranger.

“I wasn’t part of Randalin’s conspiracy,” Oak tries again. But Jude only gives her brother a grim smile. “Well, then, what a wonderful opportunity for you to prove your loyalty and die for the High King.”

We are messes and we are messed up and I don’t want to go through this world without the one person I can’t hide from and who can’t hide from me.

Cardan is lying on the bed, bandaged and sulking, in a magnificent dressing gown. “I hate being unwell,” he says. “You’re not sick,” Jude tells him. “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.

“I’ll be outside, yelling at people.” “Try not to enjoy it too greatly,” says Cardan as she goes out.