An Ember in the Ashes Quotes

“I don't smile at her. It will only scare her. For a female slave, a smile from a Mask is not usually a good thing.”
― Sabaa Tahir, An Ember in the Ashes

“I will tell you the same thing I tell every slave. The resistance has tried to penetrate this school countless times. I have discovered it every time. if you are working with the resistance, if you contact them, if you think of contacting them, I will know and i will destroy you.”
― Sabaa Tahir, An Ember in the Ashes

“Mmm. You strike me as a jam-maker.” “Really? Why?” He grins down at me. Up close, his eyes look almost black, especially shadowed as they are by long eyelashes. Right now, they shine with barely restrained mirth. “Because you’re so sweet,” he says in a mock-saccharine voice. The mischief in his eyes makes me forget, for a too-brief second, that I am a slave and that my brother is in prison and that everyone else I love is dead. Laughter explodes out of me like a song, and my eyes blur and tear. A snort escapes, which sets my dance partner to laughing, which makes me laugh harder. Only Darin ever made me laugh like this. The release is foreign and familiar, like crying, but without the pain. “What’s”
― Sabaa Tahir, An Ember in the Ashes

“Life is made of so many moments that mean nothing. Then one day, a single moment comes along to define every second that comes after.”
― Sabaa Tahir, An Ember in the Ashes

“Il suo bacio parla, implora: Fammi dimenticare, dimenticare, dimenticare...”
― Sabaa Tahir, An Ember in the Ashes

“The thought appears in my head, but I hardly know what I means.”
― Sabaa Tahir, An Ember in the Ashes

“I don’t know what happened to you,” I say. “I don’t know who my father was or why you hate him so much. But I know my death won’t free you. It won’t give you peace. You’re not the one killing me. I chose to die. Because I’d rather die than become like you. I’d rather die than live with no mercy, no honor, no soul.” I wrap my hands around the bars and look down into her eyes. For a second, confusion flashes there, an all-too-brief crack in her armor. Then her gaze turns to steel. It doesn’t matter. All I feel for her in this moment is pity. “Tomorrow, I’m the one who will be set free. Not you.” I release the bars and move to the back of the cell. Then I slide to the floor and close my eyes. I don’t see her face as she leaves. I don’t hear her. I don’t care. The killing blow is my release. Death is coming for me. Death is nearly here. I am ready for him.”
― Sabaa Tahir, An Ember in the Ashes

“Above, the heavens glow, the sky pale with starlight. Some long-buried part of me understands that this is beauty, but I am unable to wonder at it, the way I did when I was a boy. Back then, I clambered up spiky Jack trees to get closer to the stars, sure that a few feet of height would help me see them better. Back then, my world had been sand and sky and the love of Tribe Saif, who saved me from exposure. Back then, everything was different.”
― Sabaa Tahir, An Ember in the Ashes

“This life is not always what we think it will be. You are an ember in the ashes, Elias Veturius. You will spark and burn, ravage and destroy. You cannot change it. You cannot stop it.”
― Sabaa Tahir, An Ember in the Ashes

“She makes for the closest training building, and I take my time following, watching the way she moves: angry, favoring her right leg, must have bruised the left in practice, keeps clenching that right fist — probably because she wants to punch me with it.”
― Sabaa Tahir, An Ember in the Ashes

“I recognize the smell—his smell—spice and rain.”
― Sabaa Tahir, An Ember in the Ashes

“El miedo puede ser bueno, Laia. Puede mantenerte con vida. Pero no permitas que te controle. No permitas que siembre la duda en tu interior. Cuando el miedo tome el control, procura utilizar la única arma lo bastante poderosa e indestructible como para doblegarlo: tu espíritu. Tu corazón.”
― Sabaa Tahir, An Ember in the Ashes

“Beauty's a curse when one lives among men”
― Sabaa Tahir, An Ember in the Ashes

“You killed my mother, who had a lion’s heart, and my sister, who laughed like the rain, and my father, who captured truth with a few strokes of a pen.”
― Sabaa Tahir, An Ember in the Ashes

“But there are two kinds of guilt, girl: the kind that drowns you until you’re useless, and the kind that fires your soul to purpose.”
― Sabaa Tahir, An Ember in the Ashes

“makes me wonder how many times I walked right past someone in these streets who was running, someone who had just had their whole world ripped from them.”
― Sabaa Tahir, An Ember in the Ashes

“Now it hits me. This is it. This is the end. Martial tradition says a soldier who dies well dances among the stars, battling foes for all eternity. Is that what awaits me? Or will I slip into endless darkness, unbroken and quiet?”
― Sabaa Tahir, An Ember in the Ashes

“The foretelling, Elias,” the Augur says. “The future given to the Augurs in visions. That is the reason we built this school. That is the reason you are here. Do you know the story?” The story of Blackcliff’s origin was the first thing I learned as a Yearling: Five hundred years ago, a warrior brute named Taius united the fractured Martial clans and swept down from the north, crushing the Scholar Empire and taking over most of the continent. He named himself Emperor and established his dynasty. He was called the Masked One, for the unearthly silver mask he wore to scare the hell out of his enemies. But the Augurs, considered holy even then, saw in their visions that Taius’s line would one day fail. When that day came, the Augurs would choose a new Emperor through a series of physical and mental tests: the Trials. For obvious reasons, Taius didn’t appreciate this prediction, but the Augurs must have threatened to strangle him with sheep gut, because he didn’t make a peep when they raised Blackcliff and began training students here. And here we all are, five centuries later, masked just like Taius the First, waiting for the old devil’s line to fail so one of us can become the shiny new Emperor. I’m not holding my breath. Generations of Masks have trained and served and died without a whisper of the Trials. Blackcliff may have started out as a place to prepare the future Emperor, but now it’s just a training ground for the Empire’s deadliest asset. “I know the story,” I say in response to the Augur’s question. But I don’t believe a word of it, since it’s mythical horse dung.”
― Sabaa Tahir, An Ember in the Ashes

“You are full, Laia. Full of life and dark and strength and spirit. You are in our dreams. You will burn, for you are an ember in the ashes. That is your destiny.”
― Sabaa Tahir, An Ember in the Ashes

“I’m with you, Laia.” I reach out and take her hand. She squeezes it. I take a step, Laia close beside me. Then another. My mind ranges out, planning our next moves: Escape Serra. Survive the road north. Break into Kauf. Save Laia’s brother. There will be so much more in between. So much uncertainty. I don’t know if we’ll survive the catacombs, let alone the rest of it. But it doesn’t matter. For now, these steps are enough. These first few precious steps into darkness. Into the unknown. Into freedom.”
― Sabaa Tahir, An Ember in the Ashes

“Lover?” The boy lifts an eyebrow suggestively. My face grows hot. “He’s my—my friend.” “Then why worry?” The boy flashes a grin tinged with wickedness, and I find myself smiling in return. I glance over my shoulder at Izzi, talking to an earnest-looking Scholar. She laughs at something he says, her hands, for once, not straying to her eyepatch. When she catches me watching, she looks between the Tribal boy and me and waggles her eyebrows. My face goes hot again. One dance can’t hurt; we can leave after. The”
― Sabaa Tahir, An Ember in the Ashes

“I regard him anew, at last seeing him for what he is. “If you could just be who you are in here”—I place my palm over his heart—“instead of who they made you, then you would be a great Emperor.” I feel his pulse thud against my fingers. “But they won’t let you, will they? They won’t let you have compassion or kindness. They won’t let you keep your soul.” “My soul’s gone.” He looks away. “I killed it dead on that battlefield yesterday.” I think of Spiro Teluman then. Of what he said to me the last time I saw him. “There are two kinds of guilt,” I say softly. “The kind that’s a burden and the kind that gives you purpose. Let your guilt be your fuel. Let it remind you of who you want to be. Draw a line in your mind. Never cross it again. You have a soul. It’s damaged, but it’s there. Don’t let them take it from you, Elias.” His eyes meet mine when I say his name, and I reach up a hand to touch his mask. It is smooth and warm, like rock polished by water and then left to heat in the sun. I let my arm fall. Then I leave his room and walk to the doors of the barracks and out into the rising sun.”
― Sabaa Tahir, An Ember in the Ashes

“And his mask. So strange that it sits atop his face like a thing apart. Is it a sign of weakness? It can’t be—I keep hearing he’s Blackcliff’s finest soldier. Stop, Laia. Stop thinking of him. If he’s thoughtful, then there’s devilry behind it. If there’s fire in his eyes, it’s a lust for violence. He’s a Mask. They’re all the same. I”
― Sabaa Tahir, An Ember in the Ashes

“You think I want to feel this way about you? I hate it, Elias. Watching you flirt with Illustrian girls and sleep with Scholar slaves and find the good in everyone—everyone—but me.' A sob escapes her—the only time I've ever heard her cry. She chokes it back. 'Loving you is the worst thing that has ever happened to me—worse than the Commandant's whippings, worse than the Trials. It's torture, Elias.”
― Sabaa Tahir, An Ember in the Ashes

“I don't need to believe in the supernatural. Not when there's worse that roams that night”
― Sabaa Tahir, An Ember in the Ashes

“Easy. Moments after putting the willadonna in, I’m swept into the heart of the festival with a tide of Scholars. I count twelve exits and identify twenty potential weapons before I realize what I’m doing and force myself to
relax.”
― Sabaa Tahir, An Ember in the Ashes

“Your fear is good. It makes your story real.”
― Sabaa Tahir, An Ember in the Ashes

“Look at me. Don’t make me face this alone.”
― Sabaa Tahir, An Ember in the Ashes

“She was our Tribe's Kehanni, our tale-spinner, and she wove whole worlds with her voice, with the flick of a hand or the tilt of her head.”
― Sabaa Tahir, An Ember in the Ashes

“The ache in my chest expands, and my eyes are suddenly hot. “It will get better,” Keenan says. I look up to see sadness flicker across his face, almost instantly replaced by that now-familiar chill. “You’ll never forget them, not even after years. But one day, you’ll go a whole minute without feeling the pain. Then an hour. A day. That’s all you can ask for, really.” His voice drops. “You’ll heal. I promise.” He looks away, distant again, but I’m grateful to him anyway, because for the first time since the raid, I feel less alone.”
― Sabaa Tahir, An Ember in the Ashes