The Wolf and the Woodsman

All that talk of quiet obedience is for their benefit, not yours. They don't have to go to the effort of striking you down if you're already on your knees.

If it is a choice between drowning in the same river that has dragged me down a thousand times or walking into a pit of fire that had never burned me once, I will choose the flames and learn to bear it.

If there is anyone I would damn my soul for,” Gáspár says, “it would be you.

Stories are supposed to live longer than people.

I'd rather die with a blade in my hand, or at least with fire in my heart, than live as the shadow of the shadow.

What would you have me do?' he asks. 'You have already ruined me.

The trees have to be tied down by sunset. When the Woodsmen come, they always try to run.

But you followed me here.’ My own voice is a whisper. ‘What a foolish thing for a pious prince to do.’ A breath comes out of him. ‘You’ve made me a fool many times over.

I think I loved you then, and hated myself for it

What's the point of having power if you balk at every chance to wield it?

She was afraid of our lives becoming our own. She was afraid of our threads snapping, of us becoming just girls, and not wolf-girls.

That is the only way to truly believe in something,” Zsigmond says. “When you’ve weighed and measured it yourself.

Stories are supposed to live longer than people, and the trull is the most ancient story of them all. Tears go running hotly down my face. Maybe killing it will save this generation of pagans, but what about the next? When the fabric of our stories thins and wears, the people will be alive, but they won’t be pagans anymore. And that, I realize, is what Virág always feared the most. Not our deaths, or even her death. She was afraid of our lives becoming our own. She was afraid of our threads snapping, of us becoming just girls, and not wolf-girls.

I remember how the fire roared to life in front of the captain, so sudden and sure. Any wolf-girl would have marveled at such a fire, easily as impressive as the work of our best fire-makers. We would have called it power, magic. They called it piety. But what is the difference, if both fires burn just as bright?

I’m tired of this honorable Woodsman pretense,” I tell him. “You’re a prince. Act like one.” “You wouldn’t like it much if I did.” “Why not?” “Because I’d gag and bind you for talking to me the way you do.

I think of him so often I would recognize even his silhouette if he were only a painted shadow on the wall.

Your life still depends on my survival. If the prince perishes on your watch, you’ll be the one to pay for it. Tell me, wolf-girl, who belongs to whom?

It’s not about cruelty.” Gáspár has finally turned to face me. “It’s about power. Without power, all you have is anger and spite. Cruelty comes when you have the strength to turn your anger on someone else.

If you stare long enough into the darkness of the forest, eventually something will stare right back.

I've spent the last fortnight fearing you would destroy me. You may still.

The nature of a bargain, regrettably, is that we belong to each other.

But you understood, as I do, that survival is not a battle that you win only once. You must fight it again every day. And so you take your small losses so that you can live to fight tomorrow

How much can you blame a hunting dog for biting when it's only ever been trained to use it's teeth?

For a moment I want to tell him that it’s not right, that Vilmötten is our hero, not theirs. But I think of the counts in their bear cloaks and feathered mantles, and of the king in his fingernail crown. You can’t hoard stories the way you hoard gold, despite what Virág would say. There’s nothing to stop anyone from taking the bits they like, and changing or erasing the rest, like a finger smudging over ink. Like shouts drowning out the sound of a vicious minster’s name.

I have survived the worst things I thought possible…Now I must make some shape out of the unimaginable after, measure my new life by its margins and limits.

I had thought myself truest when I was skinning baby rabbits and seething with vicious hatreds, but perhaps that tenderness is true too.

I can't swallow the thought of the Woodsmen killing the little part of her that's left in me, the facsimile of our shared blood.

A bad memory shared between two people carries with it only half the pain.

A dragon is a beast." "If girls can be wolves, can't men be beasts?

I ought to slough off any tenderness like old dead skin. It will only leave me soft-bellied and spent