By the Sword Quotes

“Tom,’ he said quietly, ‘there is nothing I would like more in this world than to stay, but I am a soldier. I have a loyalty to my King. I have to go.’ A curtain of hair obscured the boy’s face and to Jonathan’s distress a large tear dissipated the blot of ink. ‘Don’t get killed,’ Tom said softly, his voice choked. ‘Mother thinks I’m too young to remember but I do. I saw him, all covered with blood, and Mother was crying and crying.’ ‘Your father?’ Jonathan asked, his chest tightening at the thought of what this child had witnessed. The boy nodded and looked up at him with brimming eyes. ‘I thought you were going to die too but you didn’t and I thought that meant you would stay.”
― Alison Stuart, By the Sword

“She could, she had reflected several times, snap her fingers at the whole shipload of Thorntons and leave them to drown in the tempest of their own choosing. She could, if it were not for one thing. She liked them.”
― Alison Stuart, By the Sword