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

by Holly Black

“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.”

Your fate is to cheat death like the little scamp you are.

“Welcome, Your Highness. We’re all so glad the rescue was successful.” “I wasn’t precisely saved,”

And it is not as though there is no strategy behind his offer, but he feels more like a hopelessly besotted ninny than a master strategist. He’d marry her, and happily.

But you are ever charming.” “Am I?” he asks. “Like a cat lazing in the sun. No one expects it to suddenly bite.” “I am not the one fond of biting,”

He believed it enough to say it, but he was an eternal optimist.

“In ballads, love is a disease, an affliction. You contract it as a mortal might contract one of their viruses. Perhaps a touch of hands or a brush of lips, and then it is as though your whole body is fevered and fighting it. But there’s no way to prevent it from running its course.” “That’s a remarkably poetic and profoundly awful view of love,”

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

But somehow knowing that he can and being afraid he wouldn’t be welcome make her seem even farther away.

“Will waiting to drown make the experience better?”

Fog is rolling toward the ship, along with higher swells. Bogdana has brought a storm. Well, that seems completely unhelpful.

“Killing is my thing,” he tells her. “You should get your own thing.”

“Is it exhausting to be charming all the time? Or is it just the way you’re made?”

it can be dangerous to become everything a person wants. The embodiment of all their desires. And more dangerous for you to twist yourself into shapes others choose for you.”

a shirt poufy enough that it may have been borrowed from Cardan.

at least she is dressed and upright.

Felicitations on the murder of your mother.”

“Their dim view of treaties gives me a dim view of them,”

“Your wish,” she tells him, like the liar she is, “is my command.”

“You fall in love with the ease of someone slipping into a bath,” she tells him. “And I imagine you extricate yourself with somewhat more drama, but no less ease.”

“That seems like an excessive response to a declaration of love.”

he is one of the Folk, brought up in Faerie enough to almost believe that bad manners outweigh murder in a list of crimes.

“If anyone wants to torture you, all they need to do is make you talk about your feelings.”

She is very beautiful, and Oak very much wishes she would go away.

He’s never been like that before. He’s never found it hard to sink into this role of besotted fool. Maybe it’s harder now that he actually is a besotted fool.

“Love,” Cardan goes on. “That force that compels us to be sometimes better and often worse.

while Jude seems conflicted, she would murder Wren herself if she thought Wren’s death would shield people she cares about. Jude wouldn’t need to dislike her to do it.

Charm me. Rip me open. Ruin me. Go too far.”

🫠

That’s what his family does. Ignores everything uncomfortable. Talks around betrayals and murders. Papers over bloodstains and duels. Brushes all the bones under the rug.

it is entirely new for him to think of them and be absolutely furious.

In a family of deceivers, telling the truth—out loud, where anyone could hear it—was a massive transgression.

“If we die, he’s going to eat you first,” Oak gets out. “So you better live.”

It’s nice, he supposes, that betraying him isn’t fun.

when is a single thing you are saying going to start making sense?”

“We can all die together,” Oak says. “In one grand, glorious final act of stupidity fit for a ballad.”

“I thought love was a fascination, or a desire to be around someone, or wanting to make them happy. I believed it just happened, like a slap to the face, and left the way the sting from such a blow fades. That’s why it was easy for me to believe it could be false or manipulated or influenced by magic. “Until I met you, I didn’t understand to feel loved, one has to feel known. And that, outside of my family, I had never really loved because I hadn’t bothered to know the other person. But I know you. And you have to come back to me,

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.

“I’m glad you’re home. Try not to get banished again.”

“I hope you’ll always be my friend, but we can’t really be friends if you’re obliged to throw away your life for my bad decisions.”

Didn’t he make her an entire speech about how she taught him about love? About knowing and being known. After that, how could she— Oh, right. He made that speech while she was unconscious.

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.

🥰

“For someone who cannot outright lie, you twist the truth so far that I am surprised it doesn’t cry out in agony.”

She didn’t want to believe me, and I am never going to tire of crowing about being right.”

😂

To those I love, I am myself. Too much myself sometimes.”

I adore you. I want to play games with you. I want to tell you all the truths I have to give. And if you really think you’re a monster, then let’s be monsters together.”

😍🥰😍🥰😍🥰😍

You’re not interested in my telling you what you want to hear. I think you might actually prefer me at my least charming.”

“I’m not good. I’m not kind. Maybe I am not even safe. But whatever you want from me, I will give you.”

🥺😍