Bloodbound Quotes

“wars were not won by better fighters, they were won by strategy, and the saints were a headless body.”
― David Estes, Bloodbound

“Couldn’t work out how the scouts sensed us before. People are fuzzy. Lots of feelings, lots of chaff. Easy to miss your mind, if you keep quiet. Horses though, they’re loud. Sharp. Halfway mad.”
― David Estes, Bloodbound

“You learned what fork to use when,” he sneered. “I learned to hunt.”
― David Estes, Bloodbound

“If the king lives, you expect me to kill him?” She shrugged her shoulders. “It is something of a tradition when it comes to deposing monarchs.”
― David Estes, Bloodbound

“The ambassador had been described in many ways—as a beauty, as an unmatched swordswoman, as a skilled politician—but in that moment the most apt description Artemio could settle upon was that she was most like a butcher’s dog with a stolen bone. Gnawing away at it without rest or respite until she cracked through to the marrow.”
― David Estes, Bloodbound

“It is my understanding that seeing their leaders traveling among them is a source of comfort to the common man, allowing them a sense that somebody is in charge and events are not unfolding entirely at random. It is why public appearances are considered a vital part of the royal duties”
― David Estes, Bloodbound

“It was the absolute best-case scenario, and she loathed how easy it had been because she’d earned none of it. Unless you were a believer in some sort of luck balance, in which case she was likely owed a great deal more good fortune to make up for the past day or so.”
― David Estes, Bloodbound

“One did not lower oneself to speak to a hound by barking.”
― David Estes, Bloodbound

“It wasn’t the death that she feared, but the failing. To fear death was the burden of commoners. Noble children were raised to know dishonor was a far more terrible thing. You could only die for a moment, but if you showed cowardice, that would be a tarnish on your family name for generations to come.”
― David Estes, Bloodbound

“The time for her decision was swiftly approaching, and to make matters worse, there was nobody she could talk to. Art had always been there to help her through every decision. If not him, then Orsina. She was not used to holding whole arguments in her head instead of allowing them to spill out. She did not know who she was, or what she would do, without another person to reflect it back to her.”
― David Estes, Bloodbound

“A testament to just how little sovereignty actually mattered to the average citizen. The baker rose before dawn to make his bread, and so long as the flour delivery arrived, he had no care for the land on which the grain was grown or which flag fluttered above it. The truth of it bore down on Artemio as though he were the cobbles beneath the carriage. They didn’t care. None of them cared. The wars and manipulation and ceaseless effort that the nobility put into ruling meant as little to them as the rain a continent away. They saw no further than their next meal.”
― David Estes, Bloodbound

“I also appreciate your own faith in my ability to know all, but I am not divine. We mortals must work from the little we have seen and heard, must we not?”
― David Estes, Bloodbound