Windwitch Quotes

“Mhe varujta. Trust me as if my soul were yours.”
― Susan Dennard, Windwitch

“It is always easier to blame gods or legends than it is to face our own mistakes.”
― Susan Dennard, Windwitch

“Oh, I know!" Safi clapped her hands, delighted by her own genius. "I shall call you Un-empressed."
"Please," Vaness said coldly, "stop this immediately."
Safi absolutely did not.”
― Susan Dennard, Windwitch

“The holiest always have the farthest to fall.”
― Susan Dennard, Windwitch

“I told you, Hell-Bard. Everyone lies. It's in the way we banter with our friends. It's in the mundane greetings we give passersby. It's in the most meaningless things we do every single moment of every single day. Hundreds upon thousands of tiny, inconsequential lies.”
― Susan Dennard, Windwitch

“Aeduan bundled her up and stood. She was so light, so fragile. A bird in his demon arms.”
― Susan Dennard, Windwitch

“Iron might weep, but it did not break.”
― Susan Dennard, Windwitch

“She was broken. She was useless. She was the pointless half of a friendship. The one who would live forever in shadows, no matter what she did. No matter whom she fought.”
― Susan Dennard, Windwitch

“Dead grass is awakened by fire,
dead earth is awakened by rain.
One life will give way to another,
the cycle will begin again.”
― Susan Dennard, Windwitch

“There are degrees of freedom. Complete freedom isn't always good, nor is the lack of it always bad.”
― Susan Dennard, Windwitch

“Why do you hold a razor in one hand?
So men remember that I am sharp as any edge.
And why do you hold broken glass in the other?
So men remember that I am always watching.”
― Susan Dennard, Windwitch

“Share the glory, share the blame.”
― Susan Dennard, Windwitch

“Stop seeing what you want to see, Merik Nihar, and start seeing what's really here!”
― Susan Dennard, Windwitch

“There were advantages to being a dead man.”
― Susan Dennard, Windwitch

“Fireflies.”

“What?” Iseult splashed upright. Chill bumps raced down her arms.

“There.” Aeduan waved across the pond. “Fireflies. They’re good luck in Marstok, I’ve heard. And children make wishes on them.” There was something light to Aeduan’s voice, as if he …

“Are you making a joke?” Iseult pushed to her feet. Water droplets splattered across the stone.

“No.”

Iseult didn’t believe him.”
― Susan Dennard, Windwitch

“Aeduan.” She’d never said his name aloud. She was surprised by how easily it rolled off the tongue.
He looked back, his expression inscrutable as always. But laced with … with something. Hope, she found herself thinking, though she knew it was fanciful.
Aeduan was not the sort of man to ever hope.”
― Susan Dennard, Windwitch

“He was younger than Iseult had imagined. No older than twenty, if she had to guess. Yet he felt old, with his voice so gruff. His language so formal.
It was in the way he carried himself too, as if he’d walked for a thousand years and planned to walk a thousand more.”
― Susan Dennard, Windwitch

“Her eyelids fluttered open. Aeduan was still observing the fireflies. “Did you make a wish?” she asked, and to her surprise, he nodded. A curt bounce of his head. “What did you wish for?”

He flexed his hands. Then shrugged. “If it comes true, then maybe one day I will tell you.”
― Susan Dennard, Windwitch

“This young man had stalked Iseult through Veñaza City. Had smiled cruelly at her, his crystal eyes swirling red. Then he had saved her too, in Lejna. With a salamander cloak and a single phrase: Mhe varujta. Trust me as if my soul were yours.”
― Susan Dennard, Windwitch

“Aeduan didn’t contradict her. She was what she was, and fighting one’s nature only brought pain. Sometimes death too.”
― Susan Dennard, Windwitch

“Someone owed Aeduan a life-debt. It was …
A first.
A first that he didn’t know how to swallow. The Threadwitch Iseult was alive because he had made it so. She could breathe her current breaths and could taste the river’s water because he had saved her life.
Though she had also, in a way, saved his. First, she had not killed him while he lay unconscious in the bear trap. And second, she had been the one to hook them to that stone before the Falls.
But Aeduan decided not to mention any of this, for if the Threadwitch believed she owed him three lives, then that gave him an advantage. That, he could use. He didn’t know how, he didn’t know when, only that he absolutely would.”
― Susan Dennard, Windwitch

“No more stalemates because they thought her unqualified and unhinged.
No more tiptoeing around a room because women oughtn’t to run. To shout. To rule.
And above all: no more blighted regrets.”
― Susan Dennard, Windwitch

“Merik swiveled his wrists slowly. At night, the temple was too dark to see the blood dripping from his arms, pooling on the granite flagstones. He felt it falling, though. Just as he felt the new, burned flesh on his hands stretching beneath torn gloves.
Yet even as pain shivered through his body, he couldn’t help but think: Only a fool ignores Noden’s gifts. For if Merik looked at this case of mistaken identity from the just the right angle, it could in fact all be seen as boon.
The assassin in the night. The fire on the Jana. The attack of a Waterwitch in Pin’s Keep. Each event had led Merik here, to Noden’s temple. To a fresco of the god’s left hand.
To the Fury.
Twice now, he’d been mistaken for that monstrous demigod, and twice now, it had worked in Merik’s favor. So why not continue using the fear invoked from that name? Was Merik not doing the Fury’s work by bringing justice to the wronged and punishment to the wicked? It was clear that Nubrevnans needed Merik’s help, and his sister Vivia…Well, she was stil out there. Alive. Wretched.
So was it not Merik’s moral duty to keep her off the throne? And he could do that if he could just prove she had indeed tried to kill him—that it was she who’d purchased that prisoner from Vizer Linday, and she who’d sent the prisoner to kill Merik.
Yes. This was right. This was Noden’s will. It throbbed in Merik’s wounds. It shivered across his scalp and down his raw back.
Take the god’s gift. Become the Fury.
Merik rose, stiff but strong, from the temple floor, and with a new purpose in his movements, he tugged his hood, his sleeves, his gloves into place. Then he turned away from the Fury’s gruesome fresco and set out to bring justice to the wronged.
Punishment to the wicked.”
― Susan Dennard, Windwitch

“Where are my blades, Threadwitch?" He stubbornly still spoke in Dalmotti.
So Iseult stubbornly answered in Nomatsi: "Hidden.”
― Susan Dennard, Windwitch

“My feet hurt, Hell-Bard."
"Good for you."
"My wrists hurt too."
"Fascinating."
... "You're a bastard.”
― Susan Dennard, Windwitch

“She did have regrets. Thousands of them, and the weight was too heavy for her to keep moving. She was a ship that could not sail, for its anchor—its thousands of anchors—locked it to the sea floor.”
― Susan Dennard, Windwitch

“This girl had fought Aeduan—tricked him and broken his spine. She had battled city guards and faced cleaved Poisonwitches head-on, yet never had Aeduan seen her show fear.”
― Susan Dennard, Windwitch

“Yet only in death, could they understand life. And only in life, will they change the world.”
― Susan Dennard, Windwitch

“He wiped his face on his shoulder, then offered Iseult his hand.

She clasped it tight, her fingers lacing between his. Together they ran.”
― Susan Dennard, Windwitch

“It was then—at that moment—that it hit Aeduan square in the chest. Iseult was here. Not hunting after the Truthwitch but here, standing tall in a land of smoking embers. Before he could speak, before he could ask her how she knew of the Red Sails, an inhuman shriek filled the air. Louder than the receding rain, louder than the cannons’ roar.

It was the mountain bat, returned and plunging right for them.

Aeduan barely yanked Iseult sideways before its talons crashed into the stones.”
― Susan Dennard, Windwitch