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

by Holly Black

Despite being the High Queen of Elfhame, with an army at her disposal and dozens of Courts at her command, she still acted as though she’d have to handle every problem herself—and that each one would best be solved through murder.

but he owed all his sisters so much that it felt impossible to deny them anything. If one of them asked for the sun, he’d better figure out how to pluck it from the sky without getting burned.

You’d think I never did a more popular thing than sit in the dark on a throne and bite people who annoyed me. I could have always done that. I could do that now.”

Cardan was spectacle incarnate and wouldn’t care if Oriana scolded him.

But worst of all is the dread of what will happen next, a dread so great that he wishes it would just happen so he could stop dreading it.

Fine, not everyone would see being thrown into a dungeon as a romantic gesture, but he’s choosing to at least consider the possibility that she put him there because she wants something more from him.

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

He wanted people to love him a normal amount. But it was true that he wanted everyone to love him.

He took a chance and lost, lost spectacularly, which is just about all he can say to his credit—at least it was spectacular.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she tells him, annoyed. “Unfair,” he says. “When I so love being ridiculous.”

He craves her smiles. The shine of her eyes when she is trying to hold back laughter.

He hates that he can fold himself up so tightly in his own skin that there’s nothing real about him on the outside.

you can make people see you the way they want to see you. This seems harmless, but 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.”

“You keep telling me that others will do to me what you have already done. I know what it is to want something so much that you would rather have the shadow of it than nothing, even if that means you will never have the real thing. And love is not that.

I shouldn’t have left her so much alone. I shouldn’t have forgotten that she could lie, or that she thought of her life as brief, and would risk much for happiness.”

“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.