A Reaper at the Gates

Curse this world for what it does to the mothers, for what it does to the daughters. Curse it for making us strong through loss and pain, our hearts torn from our chests again and again. Curse it for forcing us to endure.

Hope is stronger than fear. It is stronger than hate.

You are my temple. You are my priest. You are my prayer. You are my release.

Skies save me from the men in my life and all the things they think they know.

Love. I sigh. Love is joy coupled with misery, elation bound to despair. It is a fire that beckons me gently and then burns when I get too close. I hate love. I yearn for it. And it drives me mad.

You are cruel, Elias,” she whispers against my mouth. “To give a girl all she desires only to tear it away.” “This isn't the end for us, Laia of Serra.” I cannot give up what we could have. I don't care what bleeding vow I made. “Do you hear me? This is not our end.” “You've never been a liar.” She dashes her hands against the wetness in her eyes. “Don't start now.

I wonder if my entire life will be a series of moments in which I realize I’m an idiot long after I can actually do anything about it. Will I ever feel like I know what I’m doing?

My song is not one of peace. It is one of failure and pain. My song is one of battle and blood, death and power. It is not the song of Helene Aquilla. It is the song of the Blood Shrike.

Needing protection is not a weakness. Refusing to trust your allies is.

Strange, how silence can speak as loudly as a scream.

The stories we tell have power, of course. But the stories that go untold have just as much power.

First you will be unmade. First you will be broken.

I’m not—” I consider. “Never mind. I am jealous. Tell me he’s old, at least? Or grouchy? Or maybe a bit stupid?” “He’s young. And handsome. And smart.” I snort. “He’s probably rubbish in be—” Laia smacks me on the arm. “Battle,” I say quickly. “I was going to say battle.

Strange how monsters can reach from beyond the grave, as potent in death as they were in life.

I will find you, Laia. I will find a way. This is not our end.

You cannot walk in the shadows as long as I have and not become one.

I have survived this feeling before, and I will survive it again. In this fiery hellscape of a world, this mess of blood and madness, justice exists only for those who take it. I'll be damned if I'm not one of them.

Everyone believes that nothing concerns them until the monsters are knocking on their doors!

We are, all of us, just visitors in each other's lives.

There is a price for greed and violence. We do not always know who will pay it. But for good or ill, it will be paid.

The ocean waves thunder on, and it is man who must swim amongst them. The wind blows, cold and brittle, and it is man who must protect against it. The earth shakes and cracks, swallows and destroys, but it is man who must walk upon it. So it is with death. I cannot surrender.

You are young to stand so deeply in the shadow.

Because I know this feeling sweeping through me all too well, the feeling that all my effort, all I have worked for, means nothing. That everything and everyone is a lie. That all is cruel and unforgiving and that there is no justice.

The freedom of this place, the ease of it—it feels like none of it is for me or my people. All this belongs to others, to those who do not abide at the crossroads of uncertainty and despair. It belongs to people so used to living free that they cannot imagine a world in which they are not.

Remember that fate is never what we think it will be.

There is success,” I say. “And there is failure. The land in between is for those too weak to live. Duty first, unto death.