Deathmark Quotes

“She hadn’t lived since her childhood either. Why had she not contracted the mark back then and died with her mother? If this was to be the end, it should have come sooner. It might have spared her years of misery and loneliness.

And she was so very alone. As she lay staring at the raftered ceiling, she knew more keenly than ever how alone she was. The rest of the staff, tucked safely away inside the inn or the stable loft, slept peacefully oblivious to her midnight turmoil. No one would come looking for her. No one would care when she died.

In an instant, her panting breaths twisted into feeble laughter. She was alone, just as she always had been, and fighting against things she had no power to overcome.

Everything had changed, but nothing had changed at all.

The laughter grew in strength until she gasped, on the verge of hysterics. It didn’t matter whether she was alone or surrounded by scores of friends and loved ones. She would die either way. That naked truth infused her with a blissful, ludicrous peace.

Death was the one constant of the deathmark, the one thing she could count on. For Nell, who had lived her whole life trying to protect herself, who had never been able to count on anyone or anything, that realization was most liberating.

She would die.

But she wasn’t dead yet.

The events of her life fluttered through her mind—her distant, naïve childhood, the bleak orphanage, the years at Baker’s Inn. She had wasted time catering to fear. She had been timid, docile, no better than a mule. She had done everything in her power to protect herself from ridicule and punishment, but where had that caution brought her?

Sentenced to death, with a million regrets piled on her shoulders.

“No more.” She forced those words through her lips, determination etched between her brows. “I will fear no more.”

Spoken aloud, the oath seemed binding. Death would come—she had no power to stop it—but until the day it collected her, she would live as she saw fit.”
― Kate Stradling, Deathmark