Life is made of so many moments that mean nothing. Then one day, a single moment comes along to define every second that comes after. Such moments are tests of courage, of strength.
So long as you fight the darkness, you stand in the light.
Fear can be good, Laia. It can keep you alive. But don’t let it control you. Don’t let it sow doubts within you. When the fear takes over, use the only thing more powerful, more indestructible, to fight it: your spirit. Your heart.
I never feared the night, not even as a child, but Blackcliff’s night is different, heavy with a silence that makes you look over your shoulder, a silence that feels like a living thing.
Your emotions make you human. Even the unpleasant ones have a purpose. Don’t lock them away. If you ignore them, they just get louder and angrier.
Seeing the enemy as human. A general’s ultimate nightmare.
Mercy is weakness. Offer it to your enemies and you might as well fall upon your own sword.
I should just build a bleeding house here,” I mutter as I pick myself up off the snow-covered ground. “Maybe get a few chickens. Plant a garden.
Don’t lock yourself away from those who care about you because you think you’ll hurt them – or they’ll hurt you. What point is there in being human if you don’t let yourself feel anything?
Exhaustion is temporary. Pain is temporary. But Helene dying because I didn’t find a way to get her back on time—that’s permanent.
You fool, Helene. When you love, there is always more pain.
Failure doesn’t define you. It’s what you do after you fail that determines whether you are a leader or a waste of perfectly good air.
Rage colors her every movement. Rage that has nothing to do with her so-called bodyguards and everything to do with me and her and the confusion rolling around inside the both of us. This should be interesting
Don’t lock yourself away from those who care about you because you think you’ll hurt them or they’ll hurt you. What point is there in being human if you don’t let yourself feel anything?
Failure doesn’t define you. It’s what you do after the failure that determines whether you are a leader or a waste of perfectly good air.
You’re sure this is what you want?” I search her eyes for doubt, fear, uncertainty, but all I see is that fire. Ten hells“I’m sure”“Then I’ll find a way
I don’t smile at her. It will only scare her. For a female slave, a smile from a Mask is not usually a good thing.
Elias and Laia are each other’s countermelodies. I am just a dissonant note.
There are two kinds of guilt: the kind that drowns you until you’re useless, and the kind that fires your soul to purpose.
The rest is just wishes and hope, the most fragile of things.
Disappear! I scream the word in my mind, queen of the desolate landscape therein, ordering her ragged troops to a last stand.
She’s still clinging to the side of her mountain, just like I’m still wandering lost in my battlefield.
You—you were like me. You were a child. A normal child. And that was taken from you.”“Does that bother you?”“Well, it certainly makes you harder to hate.
Children are born to break their mothers’ hearts, my boy.
So you’ve made a few bad decisions. So have I. So has Elias. So has everyone attempting to do something difficult. That doesn’t mean that you give up, you fool. Do you understand?