Sabaa Tahir

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?

Children are born to break their mothers_ hearts, my boy.

You__ou were like me. You were a child. A normal child. And that was taken from you.___oes that bother you?___ell, it certainly makes you harder to hate.

She's still clinging to the side of her mountain, just like I'm still wandering lost in my battlefield.

Are the Trials starting?_ The girl claps her hands over her mouth. __'m sorry,_ she whispers. ______t's all right._ 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. __'m actually wondering the same thing. What's your name?___-slave-Girl._ Of course. My mother would already have scourged her name out of existence.__ight. You work for the Commandant?_ I want her to say no. I want her to say that my mother roped her into this. I want her to say she's assigned to the kitchens or infirmary, where slaves aren't scarred or missing body p

We match each other stroke for stroke until I get a hit on her right arm. She tries to switch sword arms, but I jab my scim at her wrist faster than she can parry. Her scim goes flying, and I tackle her. Her white-blonde hair tumbles free of her bun.__urrender!_ I pin her down at the wrists, but she trashes and rips one arm free, scrabbling for a dagger at her waist. Steel stabs at my ribs, and seconds later, I am on my back with a blade at my throat.__a!_ She leans down, her hair falling around us like a shimmering silver curtain.

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.

There are two kinds of guilt: the kind that drowns you until you__e useless, and the kind that fires your soul to purpose.

Elias and Laia are each other__ countermelodies. I am just a dissonant note.

Fight back, Laia. For Darin. For Izzi. For every Scholar this beast has abused. Fight. A scream bursts from me, and I claw at Marcus__ face, but a punch to my stomach takes the wind out of my lungs. I double over, retching, and his knee comer up into my forehead. The hallway spins, and I drop to my knees. Then I hear him laughting, a sadistic chuckle that stokes my defiance.Sluggishly, I throw myself at his legs. It won__ be like before, like during the raid when I let that Mask drag me about my own house like some dead thing.This time, I__l fight. Tooth and nail, I__l fight.

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.

You__e sure this is what you want?_ I search her eyes for doubt, fear, uncertainty, but all I see is that fire. Ten hells____ sure___hen I__l find a way

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.

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?

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