Laini Taylor

“Death," said Akiva. His life was leaving him fast now that he no longer held his wound. His eyes just wanted to drift closed. "I'm ready.""Well, I'm not. I hear it's dull, being dead."She said it lightly, amused, and he peered up at her. Had she just made a joke? She smiled.SmiledHe did, too. Amazed, he felt it happening, as if her smile had triggered a reflex in him. "Dull sounds nice," he said, letting his eyes flutter closed. "Maybe I can catch up on my reading.”

“Nerves," Mik told Karou."Bad?""Terrible." Stepping up behind Zuzana, he bent down to enfold her in a spoon-hug. "Ferociously, dreadfully awful. She's unbearable. You take her. I've had enough."Zuzana batted at him, then squealed as he buried his face in the curve of her throat and made exaggerated kissing noises.”

“Karou had things to do. Sometimes they took a few hours; other times, she was gone for days and returned weary and disheveled, maybe pale, maybe sunburned, or with a limp, or possibly a bite mark, and once with an unshakable fever that had turned out to be malaria.”

“That's your evidence? Flimsy. Maybe he secretly fights crime and he's texting infuriating riddles to his nemesis," suggested Karou."Yes, I'm sure that's it. Thank you.”

“But Hazael only said, "I brought you a present."Liraz took the flower, looked at it, and then a Hazael, expressionless. And then she ate it. She chewed the flower and swallowed it."Hmm," said Hazael. "Not the usual response.""Oh, do you give flowers often?""Yes," he said. He probably did. Hazael had a way of enjoying life in spite of the many restrictions they lived under, being soldiers, and worse, being Misbegotten. "I hope it wasn't poisonous," he said lightly.Liraz just shrugged. "There are worse ways to die.”

“The humans were sitting cross-legged on the floor in a circle of soldiers, pointing at things and learning more Chimaera words: salt, rat, eat, which unfortunate combination led to Zuzana rejecting the meat on her plate."I think it's chicken," Mik said, taking a bite."I'm just saying there were a lot more rats around here earlier.""Circumstantial evidence." Mik took another bite and said, in passable Chimaera and to guffaws of laughter, "Salty delicious rat.""It's chicken," insisted one of the Shadows That Live. Karou wasn't sure which it was, but she was flapping her arms like wings, and even producing chicken bones to prove it.”

“I might try that one thing, you know, that thing people do when their eyes get all wet and stupid—what’s it called? Crying?Or NOT. I might PUNCH you instead and trust that you won’t punch me back because of my endearing smallness. It would be like punching a child.”

“If it's not chocolate, it's not breakfast.”

“Her courage was a guise. She wondered if courage always was, or if there were those who truly felt no fear.”

“Un mundo es por sí solo un extraño hervidero de misteriosos yentrelazados propósitos y casualidades, pero ¿dos? Cuando dosmundos funden sus alientos a través de unas aberturas en el cielo,lo extraño se vuelve más extraño, y pueden llegar a suceder muchas cosasque pocas imaginaciones serían capaces de abarcar.”

“—No eres mi tipo.—Bueno, tú no eres el tipo de nadie —respondió Hazael—. No, espera. Loretiro. Mi espada dice que le gustaría conocerte mejor.”

“She'd heard the word before; seraphim were some high order of angels, at least according to the Christian mythos, for which Brimstone had utter contempt, as he did for all religion. 'Humans have gotten glimpses of things over time,' he'd said. 'Just enough to make the rest up. It's all a quilt of fairy tales with a patch here and there of truth.”

“La clemencia engendra clemencia, igualque las masacres devienen en masacres.”

“Había descubierto que la clemencia era capaz de una alquimia increíble: una sola gota podía diluir un lago de odio.”

“Ziri's soul felt like the high roaming wind of the Adelphas Mountains and the beat of stormhunters' wings, like the beautiful, mournful, eternal song of the wind flutes that had filled their caves with music he could not possibly remember. It felt like home.”

“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.”

“—Las almas muertas solo sueñan con la muerte —dijo el resucitador al emperador—. Los sueños insignificantes son para los hombres insginificantes. La vida es la que se expande para llenar los mundos.”

“Jael returned the lazy smile. "You're not my type.""Well, you're not anybody's type," said Hazael. "No, wait. I take it back. My sword says she'd like to know you better.”

“Long life is a burden, when it's spent in misery.”

“Hay intimidad en el dolor. Cualquiera que haya consolado a alguien que sufre lo sabe —la indefensa ternura, los abrazos y susurros, y el lento balanceo conjunto mientras dos se vuelven uno contra el enemigo, el dolor—.”

“O… quizás el Destino se presentara en la vida como un vestido colocado sobre una cama, y uno pudiera elegir si ponérselo o ir desnudo.”

“De Chicago a Nueva York, de Londres a Pekín, de los dioramas de vida animal de los museos, de las fauces congeladas en un gruñido de leones y perros salvajes, de las mandíbulas de dragones de Komodo, pitones reales y lobos árticos disecados, la muchacha, el fantasma… estaba robando dientes.”

“En algún momento, Akiva tal vez hubiera sentido vergüenza por enamorarse de Madrigal. Ahora aquella vergüenza era lo único que lo avergonzaba. Amarla había sido el único acto puro de su vida.”

“What are we fighting for? What are we killing for? What do you see when you look into the future?”

“The goblins want girls who dream so hard about being pretty their yearning leaves a palpable trail, a scent goblins can follow like sharks on a soft bloom of blood. The girls with hungry eyes who pray each night to wake up as someone else. Urgent, unkissed, wishful girls. Like Kizzy.”

“...singing ballads whose words had never known paper but lived only on the rasping edge of their own voices.”

“He remembered a story Madrigal had told him once: the human tale of the golem. It was a thing shaped of clay in the form of a man, brought to life by carving the symbol aleph into its brow. Aleph was the first symbol of an ancestral human alphabet, and the first letter of the Hebrew word truth; it was the beginning. Watching Karou rise to her feet, radiant in a fall of lapis hai, in a woven dress the colour of tangerines, with a loop of silver beads at her throat and a look of joy and relief and... love... on her beautiful face, Akiva knew that she was his aleph, his truth and beginning. His soul.”

“Don't I deserve to finally be free of you?”

“Anyway, since when are you shy? Just talk to him already!' ''And say what? Nice fiddling, handsome man?''Absolutely.”

“In truth, she had claim to no nationality. Her papers were all forgeries, and her accents -all except one, in her first language, which was not of human origin- were all fakes.”

“She hadn't expected to be sorry, and at first she wasn't. The act itself was neither disappointing nor magical; it was what it was: a new closeness. A shared secret.”

“Rushing, like wind through a door, and Karou was the door, and the wind was coming home, and she as also the wind. She was all: wind and home and door. She rushed into herself and was filled. She let herself in and was full.”

“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.”

“His gaze was heat across her cheeks, her lips. It was touch. His eyes were hypnotic, his brows black and velvet. He was copper and shadow, honey and menace, the severity of knife-blade cheekbones and a widow's peak like the point of a dagger.”

“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.”

“...the air seeming to gather around her like held breath. As if this whole place were a story about her.”

“There was only one possible answer, as plain as it was disturbing.That she was not, in fact, human.”

“There was no more happiness. But under the misery, there was hope.That the name brimstone had given her was more than a whim.That this was not the end.”

“To a new generation of butterflies, hopefully less stupid than last.Maybe they were burgeoning even now in fat little cocoons. Or maybe not.”

“Oh, gross. Your stomach is full of butterfly barf!”

“...Your body is nothing but an envelope, Karou. Your soul is another matter, and is not, as far as I know, in any immediate danger." "An envelope?" She didn't like to think of her body as an envelope--something others might be able to open up and rifle through, remove things from like so many clipped coupons. "I assumed you felt the same way," he'd said. "The way you scribble on it." Brimstone didn't approve of her tattoos, which was funny, since he was responsible for her first, the eyes on her palms.”

“Your heart is not wrong. Your heart is your strength. You don't have to be ashamed.”

“I was going to say the beginning is the good part, when it's all sparks and sparkles, before they are inevitably unmasked as assholes.”

“I'm going to join them", he said. And he did. When Sveva fled, Rath stayed and fought with the rebels.And died with them, right there at the toes of the mountains.And was dragged with them into a big pile.And burned”

“She stabbed him in the armpit, deep, and he dropped his sword.And died.So that's what is feels like, she thought as her boldness gave away to trembling. It feels awful.”

“Where am I and doing what?You might well ask.Freaky chick, you say?You can't imagine.I am priestess of a sandcastlein a land of dust and starlight.”

“And yet, something tied them together, strong than any of that, something with the power to conduct her blood and breath like a symphony, so that anything she did to fight against it felt like discord, like disharmony with her self.”

“Being near her was like balancing on a tipping world, trying to keep your footing as the ground wanted to roll you forward, hurl you into a spiral from which there was no recovery, only impact, and it was a longed-for impact, a sweet and beckoning collision.”

“We dreamed together of the world remade.”

“As she walked, clock towers across Prague started arguing midnight, and the long, fraught Monday came at last to a close.”