Lady Hotspur Quotes

“Mora found her heart racing, and her body dissolved, skin and hair and bones, her blood and her thoughts scattering with the stars, turning with the earth.
She sighed, and in that sigh was sewn a word for longing. Stars pooled around her, hanging down like chandeliers and spinning like waterwheels; they were inside her, cleansing her body and mind by stripping away anything of shadows, leaving behind only streaks of sharpened will.”
― Tessa Gratton, Lady Hotspur

“The stars promised a girl for my sister's third, but when the child arrived she seems to our eyes to be a boy. So she was named Vae and a son was announced. But not too many years passed before it became clear to Ryrie and me that Vae herself believed the stars, and regardless of how she seemed to us, the prophecy had always been true".

"The power of the stars to move minds in Innis Lear is greater than magic, I think".

"It helps that Solas executed the first person to disrespect my daughter".”
― Tessa Gratton, Lady Hotspur

“All her attention was for Hal Bolinbroke. The arrow of her heart forever pointed there.”
― Tessa Gratton, Lady Hotspur

“I don't need magic, Hotspur. I don't need power. I need you. Aremoria is enough as it is, and we can be strong queens - I can do it, with you. Your death is not in my story, Hotspur. I don't care if that's what they've always intended - earth saints or wizards or I don't care who. You're not going to die, and I'm not going to die, we're both going to live. I will not participate in a story where the woman I love dies. That has always been the end for women like us - but not anymore. Not today.”
― Tessa Gratton, Lady Hotspur

“Then let the star roads blaze. I am the lion prince, and my heart is already home.”
― Tessa Gratton, Lady Hotspur

“Hal kissed her again. Fast and urgent, and stars wheeled overhead and inside Hotspur's mind. She was terrified this would be the final kiss of her life, as if no other kisses counted.”
― Tessa Gratton, Lady Hotspur

“She paused under the pink and silver clouds, wincing at the cold dawn. If she was to be a rising sun, she must surely be a winter one. Bright, but falsely warm.”
― Tessa Gratton, Lady Hotspur

“Yet neither was allowed to rest until now. You're more like them than not, part earth saint, restless with your past. When your wanderings are over, when your bargain is served and you are ready, you, too, will come home.”
― Tessa Gratton, Lady Hotspur

“You won't remember me."

"I won't forget you, either. Someday, under the sky again, my tongue will form the shape of your name and bring with it all the meaning it holds.”
― Tessa Gratton, Lady Hotspur

“What is silver when I am crowned by the moon itself?”
― Tessa Gratton, Lady Hotspur

“It's a waste of time to second-guess your choices on the battlefield. Once made, they can only be acted upon, analyzed, but there's no point to regret."

"This isn't war."

"We're always at war in this world.”
― Tessa Gratton, Lady Hotspur

“It's a waste of time to second-guess your choices on the battlefield. Once made, they can only be acted upon, analyzed, but there's no point to regret.”
― Tessa Gratton, Lady Hotspur

“Her seams tugged, about to burst; those stitched-over scars and those she'd been born with, about to be unwoven, undone by a simple word from the mouth of Hal Bolinbroke.”
― Tessa Gratton, Lady Hotspur

“You don't know her. Hotspur has always been whole, whole unto herself, and unbreakable. If nothing can keep her whole it's because nothing can break her apart.”
― Tessa Gratton, Lady Hotspur

“You're... hungry. But not with your body. It's your heart, and that is how you were born. You make friends so that you can feel like your heart's well can be filled, though you understand by now it never will be.”
― Tessa Gratton, Lady Hotspur

“You must do what you feel to be right. When the wind and the stars will not tell us what to do, we must choose for ourselves.”
― Tessa Gratton, Lady Hotspur

“What is to come, Rowan?"

"I cannot say, because I do not know. Except that I will open the star roads. But here is what I believe - no great clap of thunder nor act of wizards and queens will bring change. It will be all of us, making small choices, intimate ones. That is why the stars offer no clarity. There is no one moment, one choice to point to. The stars see a thousand possibilities, a thousand paths, and they all intersect on the Longest Night.”
― Tessa Gratton, Lady Hotspur

“So elaborate and lovely, Hal," she said, "and I note you've charmed Solas."

"The Queen is a sensible woman, and being charmed is a sensible reaction to me.”
― Tessa Gratton, Lady Hotspur

“You do not rule, you do not control, you become.”
― Tessa Gratton, Lady Hotspur

“A queen is more than a woman," Solas said softly. "But she is more than a star, too, more than a name or crown. A queen makes herself.”
― Tessa Gratton, Lady Hotspur

“When your whole world burns, you must learn to breathe fire.”
― Tessa Gratton, Lady Hotspur

“This book was the next best thing, a piece of her, a flower of her mind built of spiraling petal-dreams, gifted to the roses to embrace, to keep, to hold until the time a new dreamer was born.”
― Tessa Gratton, Lady Hotspur

“What if I love you so well it changes the entire landscape of the world?”
― Tessa Gratton, Lady Hotspur

“But I don't want our relationship to be another war we have to win. I just want to be with you. To be ourselves. Can you make that happen? Can you imagine a time when we would not be fighting for merely our right to exist as we are?”
― Tessa Gratton, Lady Hotspur

“I think we shape our own stories. We must. Especially if we don't fit into stories as we're supposed to.”
― Tessa Gratton, Lady Hotspur

“Her hopes had blossomed here along with her muscles and will, along with her desires and fears and all her power.”
― Tessa Gratton, Lady Hotspur

“The consequences of childhood, Hal thought, are gentle guilts and awkward memories. The consequences of adulthood are ghosts.”
― Tessa Gratton, Lady Hotspur

“Hal was not yet a prince when she fell in love with Lady Hotspur, but she would be within the hour.”
― Tessa Gratton, Lady Hotspur

“A pleasure, princess" Hl said, feeling strange in her belly: a strangeness of discovery, for now when she thought on it, she was absolutely certain Ryrie's youngest child had been a son. Whatever magic this was, Hall liked it.”
― Tessa Gratton, Lady Hotspur

“The consequences of childhood ... are gentle guilts and awkward memories. The consequences of adulthood are ghosts.”
― Tessa Gratton, Lady Hotspur