Sabaa Tahir

The voice is deep and soft, not a sound so much as a feeling. It is storm and wind and leaves twisting in the night. It is roots sucking deep at the earth, and the pale, sightless creatures that live below the ground. But there__ something wrong with this voice, something diseased at its core.

It's a trick question, Aquilla. A Mask is not made. She is remade. First she is destroyed. Stripped down to the trembling child that lives at her core. It doesn't matter how strong she thinks she is. Blackcliff diminishes, humiliates, and humbles her." "But if she survives, she is reborn. She rises from the shadow world of failure and despair so that she might become as fearful as that which destroyed her. So that she might know darkness and use it as her scim and shield in her mission to serve the Empire.

When did you star here?_ I ask her.__hree days ago. Sir. Aspirant. Um__ She wrings her hands.__eturius is fine.__he walks carefully, gingerly__he Commandant must have whipped her recently. And yet she doesn't hunch or shuffle like the others slaves. The straight-backed grace with which she moves tells her story better than words. She'd been a freewoman before this__'d bet my scims on it. And she has no idea how pretty she is__r what kind of problems her beauty will cause for her at a place like Blackcliff. The wind pulls at her hair again, and I catch her scent__ike fruit and sugar. __an I give you some advi

It takes only a split second for life to go horribly wrong. To fix the mess, I need a thousand things to go right. The distance from one bit of luck to the next feels as great as the distance across oceans. But, I decide in this moment, I will bridge that distance, again and again, until I win. I will not fail.

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.

Perhaps grief is like battle: After experiencing enough of it, your body__ instincts take over. When you see it closing in like a Martial death squad, you harden your insides. You prepare for the agony of a shredded heart. And when it hits, it hurts, but not as badly, because you have locked away your weakness, and all that__ left is anger and strength.

You fool, Helene. When you love, there is always more pain.

Exhaustion is temporary. Pain is temporary. But Helene dying because I didn't find a way to get her back on time__hat's permanent.

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?

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.

There will be so much more in between. So much uncertainty. I don't know if we'll survive the catacombs, let alone the rest of it. But it doesn't matter. For now, these steps are enough. These first few precious steps into darkness. Into the unknown. Into freedom.

Mercy is weakness. Offer it to your enemies and you might as well fall upon your own sword.

Seeing the enemy as human. A general's ultimate nightmare.

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.

I never feared the night, not even as a child, but Blackcliff__ night is different, heavy with a silence that makes you look over your shoulder, a silence that feels like a living thing.

So long as you fight the darkness, you stand in the light.

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.

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.