“A dream dirty and bruised is better than no dream at all.”
“I am one of billions. I am stardust gathered fleetingly into form. I will be ungathered. The stardust will go on to be other things someday and I will be free.”
“Once upon a time, an angel and a devil fell in love and dared to imagine a new way of living—one without massacres and torn throats and bonfires of the fallen, without revenants or bastard armies or children ripped from their mothers’ arms to take their turn in the killing and dying.
Once, the lovers lay entwined in the moon’s secret temple and dreamed of a world that was a like a jewel-box without a jewel—a paradise waiting for them to find it and fill it with their happiness.
This was not that world.”
“Once upon a time, an angel and a devil held a wishbone between them.
And its snap split the world in two.”
“It was brave," countered Issa. "It was rare. It was love, and it was beautiful.”
“Dead souls dream only of death. Small dreams for small men. It is life that expands to fill worlds. Life is your master, or death is”
“So," he called to her back, "Just out of curiosity, you know, purely conversation and all, at what age will you be entertaining offers of marriage?"
"You think it'll be so easy?" she called back over her shoulder. "No way. There will be tasks. Like in a fairy tale."
"Sounds dangerous."
"Very, so think twice."
"No need," he said. "You're worth it.”
“Nothing made you feel so useless as another person's grief.”
“Your heart is not wrong. Your heart is your strength. You don't have to be ashamed.”
“As long as you're alive, there's always a chance things will get better."
"Or worse," said Liraz.
"Yes," he conceded. "Usually worse."
Hazael cut in. "My sister, Sunshine, and my brother, Light. You two should rally the ranks. You'll have us killing ourselves by morning.”
“Mercy, she had discovered, made mad alchemy: a drop of it could dilute a lake of hate.”
“Once upon a time, a girl lived in a sandcastle, making monsters to send through a hole in the sky.”
“Imagine if [Juliet] woke up and he was still alive, but..." She swallowed, waiting out a tremor in her voice. "But [Romeo] had killed her whole family. And burned her city. And killed and enslaved her people.”
“You have only to begin, Lir. Mercy breeds mercy as slaughter breeds slaughter. We can’t expect the world to be better than we make it.”
“Brimstone once told me that to stay true in the face of evil is a feat of strength.”
“Daughter of my heart,' was the message Brimstone sent just for Karou. She wanted to cry again right here in the court, thinking of it. 'Twice-daughter, my joy. Your dream is my dream, and your name is true. You are all of our hope.”
“Be your own place of safety, she told herself, straightening. No crossbar in the world could protect her from what lay ahead, and neither could a tiny knife ticked in her boot - though there her tiny knife would most certainly remain - and neither could a man, not even Akiva. She had to be her own strength, complete unto herself.”
“Once upon a time, the sky knew the weight of angel armies on the move, and the wind blew infernal with the fire of their wings.”
“Where am I and doing what?
You might well ask.
Freaky chick, you say?
You can't imagine.
I am priestess of a sandcastle
in a land of dust and starlight.”
“It wasn't disgust she felt for Karou, not anymore; it was indignation. Incredulity. A man like Akiva crosses worlds to find you, infiltrates the enemy capital just to dance with you, bends heaven and hell to avenge your death, saves your comrade and kin from torture and death, and you send him off looking gut-punched, diminished, carved hollow?”
“Anyone who would wear all white like that clearly had issues. Just looking at him made her wish she had a paintball gun, but hell, you couldn’t pack for every eventuality.”
“It was interesting the way a small hate could grow inside a big hate and take it over.”
“What can a soldier do when mercy is treason, and he is alone in it?”
“It was funny, she thought, but her smile turned wistful because she had nobody to tell.”
“It was one of those dreams that invade the space between seconds, proving sleep has its own physics- where time shrinks and swells, lifetimes unspool in a blink, and cities burn to ash in a mere flutter of lashes.”
“Light coursed through Karou and darkness chased it-burning through her, chilling her, shimmer and shadow, ice and fire, blood and starlight, rushing, roaring, filling her.”
“Take up a weapon and you become an instrument with as pure a purpose as the weapon itself: to find arteries and open them, limbs and sever them; to take what is alive and deliver it unto death.”
“Let's just get this out of the way so I can relax. Karou, your friends aren't going to eat us, are they?"
No, Karou thought. They are not. She whispered back, "I don't think so. But try not to look delicious, okay?”
“One world on its own is a strange enough seethe of coiling, unknowable veins of intention and chance, but two? Where two worlds mingle breath through rips in the sky, the strange becomes stranger, and many things may come to pass that few imaginations could encompass.”
“What was that?” she whispers.
“If you have to ask, I didn’t do it right.”
“Of course. I don't want you to go through that alone. If something hurt you enough to make you want to forget it, I want to help you get through it. let's chase these dreams away, Pax.”
“He looked at her, and she couldn't contradict him. Nor could she offer any false reassurance. Silence, at least, was honest.”
“We have these impossibly high standards and we'll probably never live up to our perfect fantasies of our future selves.”
“The fourth cat stepped forward; Yellowfang didn’t know his name. He was a skinny gray tom, and he studied Brokentail carefully before he spoke. “I give you a life for truth. Without it, kin is set against kin, Clan against Clan. Hold fast to truth in all your dealings and let it guide your words.”
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