"She turned to look at him, and he was already looking at her. “I’m going to miss you when I wake up,” she whispered, because she realized that she must have fallen asleep under the sun. Arin was too r..."
- Marie Rutkoski
"He told himself a story. Not at first. At first, there wasn’t time for thoughts that came in the shape of words. His head was blessedly empty of stories then. War was coming. It was upon him. Arin had..."
"Someone was coming through the velvet.He was pulling it wide, he was stepping onto Kestrel’s balcony—close, closer still as she turned and the curtain swayed, then stopped. He pinned the velvet agains..."
"As his people positioned themselves in and around the pass, Arin though that he might have misunderstood the Valorian addiction to war. He had assumed it was spurred by greed. By a savage sense of sup..."
"People of the hundred," he said, using an ancient Herrani phrase Arin was surprised he knew, "who leads you?"So many cried Arin's name that it no longer sounded like his name."
"A strange feeling: as if filaments trailed from Arin's body. A thousand fishing lines snagging attention. Here and there. Little tugs. People caught on the lines. The way sometimes people couldn't loo..."
"She said, I'm going to miss you when you when I wake up.Don't wake up, he answered.But he did.Kestrel, beside him on the grass, said. "Did I wake you? I didn't mean to."It took him a velvety moment to..."
"Arin, are you all right?""How?" He managed. "How did her arm break?""She fell of a ladder."He must have visibly relaxed, because his cousin raised her brows and looked ready to scold. "I imagined some..."
"Arin. I've wanted to do this for a long time."Her words silenced him, steadied him.Antecipation lifted within her like the fragance of a garden under the rain. She sat at the piano, touching the keys...."
"Something tugged inside him. A flutter of unease.Do you sing? Those had been her first words to him, the day she had bought him. A band of nausea circled Arin’s throat, just as it had when she had ask..."