A Sky Beyond The Storm Quotes
"Everything is better when you're not hungry."
"The number of Scholar dead was greatly exaggerated."
"Would that I had unearthed no magic, loved no wife, sparked no children, gentled no ghosts."
"My family was killed too. My wife slaughtered on a battlefield. My children murdered with salt and steel and summer rain."
"I could not bring myself to do as she did—and this is what I get."
"Fury floods my veins, numbing my pain, making me forget the Commandant. It colors everything red, and a darkness roars inside me."
"You will not win. You have harmed too many with your vengeance."
"There is no right or wrong with Death. Death is death."
"I did not give you the dreams. You see them because they are truth."
"I am not alone, but the presence with me is not outside me. It is in me."
"You are a child of kedim jadu, girl. Old magic. For centuries, I have waited for one of the kedim jadu to defy the Nightbringer. You did so, glorious and fearless, and now you quake, child? Now you quiver?"
"Perhaps I finally believe that my victories have been because I decided to fight, when others might have given up."
"I will not accept death. Why should I, when there is life yet burning in my veins?"
"Disappear. Power breaks over me and I shudder at the force of it. This? This is what I can do?"
"One day"—I stare daggers at him—"your eavesdropping is going to get you into trouble that even your wights can’t get you out of."
"It feels right." I do not add that I have no earthly idea how I will destroy the jinn—or even where to begin.
"I do not trust anyone else to do it, Darin. Other people have too much to lose."
"The world’s not only full of bad things, you know."
"Your heart is the only thing that can be trusted."
"But for all of her cunning, Keris is still human."
"You spoil them, Meherya. So many sweets will dim their fire."
"Why did I have to fall in love first with a vengeance-obsessed fire creature, and then with a noble idiot who, who—"
"You cannot have it," I roar at them. "You can have my wrath instead. My hate."
"Stay with me, I think. Stay with me so I can remind you of who you used to be."
"My exhaustion is bone deep, a product of sleep riven with nightmares and waking thoughts consumed by her."
"Oblivion doesn’t materialize. As Cain promised, Laia remains in my mind."
"Speaking Sadhese, the spirit tells me her story in bits and pieces."
"I taste the river water and spit it out almost in that same instant. It savors strongly of death."
"Skies only know what our people are suffering."
"The situation here is too precarious, Harper."
"You are the Blood Shrike, and I am sworn to protect you."
"The ghost shudders. She holds too tightly to her suffering."
"It was vast. And hungry. It wanted to devour me."
"Fear is only your enemy if you allow it to be. Think, Laia."
"Tell me about this storm. Release your fear."
"The Nightbringer moves against the human world."
"He’s dead, Shrike. A Karkaun arrow took him out."
"We need time for the message to spread so that when we do attack, the women will be prepared to fight."
"No blade forged by human or efrit, wight or ghul or wraith, nor any object of this world may kill us."
"You have a soul. It’s damaged, but it’s there. Don’t let them take it from you."
"There is no safe place for me in this world, Elias. Not unless I create it for myself."
"You must forget the living, for they can hurt you no longer."
"Home, I tell myself. I am home. But it doesn’t feel like home anymore."
"The weight shifts. A drop of warm water plops onto my forehead. I tense."
"For centuries, humans were enough... But in time, a loneliness descended."
"But you’ll remain human. Is that not worth a bit of madness?"
"Suffering is a state of mind, a feeling. It can’t do anything."
"Suffering is a monster, waiting to be released from a cage."
"There must be some good in you if she saw fit to name you a Soul Catcher."
"All is silent, and the silence is obscene, for this forest is the one place where ghosts are meant to find succor. And now they cannot. Because the Nightbringer is taking them all."
"To rule the Waiting Place is to light the way for the weak, the weary, the fallen, and the forgotten in the darkness that follows death."
"I think of the Augur, that odious, cawing wretch."
"The soft grass is nothing but snow-dusted yellow scrub now."
"Whether I wish to fight his forces or not, I cannot let him steal away any more."
"I reach for the scims gingerly, as if they will burn my palms when I touch them."
"The people of Antium await aid. They await the weapons and soldiers that will allow them to cast out the Karkauns."
"We will win, or we will die. We will take back our city for our people, or we will watch the Empire fall."
"You’re strong. You always have been, because of the Star. But for other reasons too."
"I walk along a river of death, but I am not alone."
"Would that we all knew the cracked terrain of each other’s broken hearts. Perhaps then, we would not be so cruel to those who walk this lonely world with us."
"Cities are nothing. You are nothing. Ik tachk mort fid iniqant fi."
"I know," Rehmat says after a pause. "And I understand."
"Love and hate, Laia," Rehmat says. "They are two sides of the same coin."
"His death will usher in only more despair. You must trust me, child."
"I cannot speak of my time with him. If I could, I would tell you all."
"But matters of the Waiting Place are. And right now, the two are one and the same."
"There is no time to mourn," I say. "Not if they wish to survive and not if they wish their dead to pass on in peace instead of torment."
"The Nightbringer steals spirits," I say. "He keeps them from crossing over."
"It’s not the jinn we’re after." She glances at me. "You want the Martials."
"All of it is because of the Nightbringer. It will end when the king of the jinn is dead."
"She split her forces." I say. "She doesn’t give two figs about Taib, Laia. She wants Nur."
"I do not speak to them because I’m not their savior, Laia," I say. "I can’t tell them everything will be all right. Or that I can make them safe. Instead, I tell them they can flee their enemies or fight, knowing that they will fight. Knowing that as a result, many will die. And I’m doing all of it so the ghosts find peace in the Waiting Place. I do it to save the dead, not the living."
"No one wants to fight for nothing. My grandfather, Quin Veturius, is a legendary leader of men. His soldiers follow him because they trust his battle acumen. They trust that he cares about them and their families and their lives."
"The Commandant taught me that to defeat your enemy, you had to know her better than you knew yourself. Her wants. Her weaknesses. Her allies. Her strengths."
"Come on, Soul Catcher, I snarl at myself. You’ve dealt with worse."
"We can’t go to Taib," I tell her. "Keris is sending an army to Nur."
"I wish I’d had more lovers. My first was a Mercator boy I met at a masquerade in Navium while on leave. He was handsome and seductive and far more experienced than I."
"Admit it, you coward. The way you love Harper."
"I’m here because it’s been months since you kissed me, but I think about that moment so often it feels like it happened yesterday," I say. "And because when I saw you go down in the battle, I thought I’d—I’d tear apart the world if anything happened to you. And because I—"
"I did not ask what he is doing, my love." Mamie tilts her head, dark eyes seeing too much. "I asked how he is."
"You still think you can decide things for everyone." My hands curl into fists. "But you cannot. And you cannot make me stop loving you, Elias Veturius. Not when I know that somewhere in there, you feel the same."
"Ah, I see now, little Soul Catcher, the game you have played," he says. "So clever to empty out the city. To use the efrits. But it changes nothing. Your kind is a plague on this world. There are always more humans, and so there will always be more to reap. If not here, then another city."
"It is all so exhausting," Livia says. "Is it wrong that I just want it to be over? This is no way to live—"
"You held fast against the tide, Blood Shrike," she says. "None could have stood as you did. Without you, we would all be dead."
"War is like the sun. It burns away all the softness and leaves only the cracks. The Nightbringer has been at war for a long time. Learning his story will teach us his weaknesses. It will help us exploit the cracks."
"Sechei and Diladhardha are the first steps to hunting a story. When you have attained them, then a story might be coaxed from the shadows."
"We seek truth, Laia. And when we find it, we must approach it with empathy. We must understand the creatures, fey or human, who populate our tales. Respect them. Love them, despite the villainous things they do. We must see them. Else how will our stories echo in the hearts of those who hear them? How will the stories survive beyond one telling?"
"I am unmade. I whisper to Harper the words the Augur uttered to me so long ago. I am b-broken."
"You are broken. But it is the broken things that are the sharpest. The deadliest. It is the broken things that are the most unexpected, and the most underestimated."
"I promise I will keep you safe." I fight back the tears that threaten. "Whatever the price. I will protect you as I didn’t protect them. This I vow, by blood and by bone."
"You cannot lead them if you do not understand them."
"Enjoy it, because soon it might all be gone."
"It is the broken things that are the sharpest. The deadliest. It is the broken things that are the most unexpected, and the most underestimated."
"Vengeance would take years. Centuries. And I could not do it alone. I needed to prey on humanity’s worst traits. Tribalism. Prejudice. Greed."
"How many times have you faced the Nightbringer and survived, Zaldar?"
"The pain of losing something so dear is like a storm that comes suddenly out of a clear sky. It's shocking and overwhelming, and when it's gone, it leaves you bewildered, wondering how you could have been so unprepared."
"The strength of a people's spirit, in the face of destruction, shows the true measure of their courage."
"It is not the victories that define us, but the battles we choose to fight."
"To seek vengeance is to chain oneself to the past, while to forgive is to unlock the potential for a brighter future."
"In the heart of darkness, the smallest spark of hope can illuminate the path forward."