“Someday we will be more than words in the dark.”
“Even the strongest blizzards start with a single snowflake.”
“No matter what happens, no matter who turns on me, no matter what pompous swine thinks he has power over me, I am still me. I will always be me.”
“Fear is a seed that, once planted, never stops growing.”
“That's why literature is so fascinating. It's always up for interpretation, and could be a hundred different things to a hundred different people. It's never the same thing twice.”
“They make decisions; they mold your future. The trick is to find a way to still be you through it all.”
“Holding on to some part of your past even if it means also holding on to the pain of never again having it. That pain is less horrible than the pain of forgetting.”
“Sometimes placing our belief in something bigger than ourselves helps us get to a point where we can be enough on our own, magic or no magic.”
“So,” I start as we pull to the left in the hall, “you’re the king of Cordell’s son. How’s that?”
Theron chuckles. “Beneficial sometime, horrible others. You’re beautiful – how’s that?”
“I need a book that says 'Here's how to defeat Spring and restore power to your king, and while you're at it, here's how to prove you matter when no one else thinks you do—”
I stop. I'm staring at the bookshelves and not at Theron, and I don't think I'll ever be able to look at him again without shriveling up from embarrassment. I can still hear what I said hanging around me, my weak, weak admission, and I can't bring myself to breathe, let alone face him.
Theron doesn't give me a choice. He crawls up onto his knees and moves into my line of sight, his forehead wrinkled and his eyes darting over mine like he's trying to figure me out the same way he figured out that passage. After a moment of silence, he grimaces.
“You matter,” is all he says.”
“You may have me trapped in this.” I tug him off me. “But you aren’t the first man to underestimate me, so may I advise you to start treating me with a little more respect…”
“When you're a teenager, being different- if it's not by choice - seems like the worst thing imaginable. But is it really?”
“I don’t need made-up strength. I’m strong enough on my own—me, Meira, no magic or conduit or anything.”
“I know there are things you aren’t telling me. Big things…Sir, I will find out. I only hope your reasoning is good enough for me to forgive you.”
“Congratulations, everyone," I announce as I open the door to Noam's study. "You've finally broken Meira, the crazy, orphaned soldier-girl. She's snapped, all thanks to the mention of floral arrangements.”
“I’m Hannah’s daughter. I’m Winter’s conduit. I’m a warrior, a soldier, a lady, a queen, and most of all, as I plunge across the snowfield toward Jannuari’s silent ruin, I’m Meira.”
“I wanted a life of my own, a life where I could feel myself being a part of Winter. And that, to me, came though fighting for it.”
“One flake falls, twisting down through the empty sky. One frozen speck of snow. Then another, and another, and before I know it the roads will be covered in dozens of distinct flakes. All these little pieces combining to create one giant, volatile snowstorm, something beautiful and dangerous and epic”
“No matter our dire circumstances, no matter our shared upbringing, no matter the chill his smile sends over my body, he’s still him, and I’m still me, and yes, he needs to have a female heir someday, but with a proper lady, a duchess or a princess—not the girl who spars with him.”
“You may be able to look beyond the reality of our situation and imagine some other outcome, but all I ever saw, all I ever see, is a reminder that our lives aren't our own.”
“Don’t let fear take hold of you—fear is a seed that, once planted, never stops growing.”
“I’m at the center of this, a weird possessive feud between the Winter king and the Cordellan prince.”
“Books in towering stacks lean against the fireplace and on small end tables, and crowd the bookshelves so tightly I fear the entire structure will burst in an explosion of paper and dust. They're the large books too, great archaic things that look so old, so fragile, that I worry I might disintegrate them just by breathing too hard.”
“That, I think, i a truer mark of belonging somewhere - being willing to do anything, everything, that needs to be done, regardless of what I want.”
“I wanted to be a soldier. Someone who would earn standing in Winter. Someone Sir would look at with pride. Someone Mather would look at and —”
“Soon he’ll know the blizzard started with me.”
“It’s so cold that foreigners have to wrap in layers of fur to walk from building to building, while our natural Winterian blood keeps us warm even in the worst conditions. And snow is everywhere, always, so much that the grass beneath it is white from lack of sun. An entire kingdom wrapped in an orb of eternal winter.”
“So tired of Noam and Herod and Sir and Angra and all these arrogant, puppet-master men who hold all the strings and refuse to give them up.”
“He stares into the sky, his eyes absent and empty, an expression that branded its horrible meaning into my mind long, long ago. A candle without a spark, a sky without a sun, the look people get when they cease to be people, start being bodies.”
“You know, there is only one letter's difference between lonely and lovely," I told him once when he was down. "There is only one letter's difference between loner and loser," he retorted.”
“To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition. —SAMUEL JOHNSON”
“I don’t want you to be free from something, I simply want you to be free. See the difference: Freedom from is never total; that “from” keeps it entrapped with the past. Freedom from can never be real freedom. Neither can freedom for ever be real freedom; that is a search for a new slavery.”
“Happiness consists of living in the dailiness of life and not knowing how happy you are. True happiness comes of not knowing you're happy.”
“Waiting should always be avoided. Good or bad, confronting the future is better than torturous anticipation or crippling dread.”
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