The Ashes And The Star-Cursed King Quotes
"One little movement, and he sold away his kingdom."
"Her eyes were the last thing he saw when he died."
"Maybe the king always knew that his greatest love would be his ruination."
"Those seconds between sleep and waking were the best of the day."
"I am the Nightborn King. Do you think I’m going to beg for your respect? I don’t need your respect. Your fear will do. Bow."
"And I let the head fall with a sickening wet thump, rolling down the stairs right into his former body. Fittingly, the position it had fallen into did indeed resemble a bow of prostration."
"Sometimes, it’s the little things that make the reality of a situation hit you."
"And now here I was picking blood out from under my fingernails, deciding how to best make myself just like the man who had destroyed me."
"That’s what I do. Whenever I feel it, I ask myself, Who wins?"
"This is a dangerous world, little serpent."
"I was no stranger to gazing longingly out this bedchamber window."
"The explosion wiped away all my thoughts."
"I was running into the flames before I gave myself time to think about it."
"But I was a fucking incredible warrior. Really, really good at killing things."
"Sometimes, I felt like I knew Oraya better than anyone I had ever met. Sometimes, she was the most confounding mystery."
"I did not dream of Vincent. Instead, I dreamed of Raihn, and the way his face looked as he died..."
"You’ve been given some drugs," he said. "Give it a minute."
"Your father had a lot of secrets," Raihn said quietly, in a tone that meant so much more than the words alone.
"I think Alarus is much more than a corpse by now. I think his remains, whatever they are, have spread throughout Obitraes."
"You manipulated me," I snapped. "You’ve been playing games with me since the beginning."
"Because the things you said in Vincent’s office that night—they’re true," he said. "There is no excuse for what I have allowed the Bloodborn to do to this kingdom."
"But," he added, softly, seriously, "you are one hell of an ally."
"I tried to outrun this thought. Tried to make my muscles hurt more so my heart hurt less. It didn’t work."
"Turning is a fate worse than death. It is death, in a way—death of a version of yourself that you will never see again."
"He did it before he left for the Kejari. Set up all the pieces. Even then, everyone knew he would win. Especially him. So he had to set up everything beforehand. Get rid of everyone who stood in his way."
"Years blur by like wet paint drowned in the rain, drenching a forever-blank canvas."
"He watches the sunrise every day until the rays of light bite into his skin."
"In a dark world, eyes naturally find the light. She becomes the brightest thing in his."
"Give someone endless life, and then take whatever you want from them afterwards. An eternity of servitude, sex, devotion."
"Sometimes it’s no use to question our more primal instincts."
"Sometimes the little things are harder than the big things."
"I understand what it feels like to not have time. You and I, we don’t get centuries to play our games like they do. And I think it makes us better. More ruthless. More willing to do what needs to be done."
"I am tired of being caged. I recognize bars when I see them."
"I should have hated the version of myself I saw."
"Vampires didn’t kill for practicality. They killed for joy. Retribution. Spectacle. Fear."
"Because you deserve so much more than what this world has given you."
"Don’t feed yourself to the wolves, little serpent. Know when your bite isn’t strong enough."
"How easily Raihn being in danger had unlocked something primal in me."
"The hard part would be making it there."
Here he was. The Nightborn King. Drenched, wearing ill-fitting, cheap leathers, face completely covered in shit save for the domino mask of "clean" skin he’d wiped around his eyes.
"I am queen just as much as he is king. When we’ve reclaimed our kingdom, I intend to rule beside him as such."
"Challenging has never scared us before."
"Sometimes we need a little trouble to get shit done."
"It was about everything before that. Repairing some chasm that had opened in our relationship."
"Well fuck, if we can’t be even a little optimistic, what are we doing any of this for?"
"This was what someone did with god teeth."
"This is the moment when the slave becomes a king."
"But just because one tells themselves something, understand, that does not make it true."
"She looked at him like he was the sun. And he looked at her like she was the moon."
"Loving everything in her but her humanity wasn’t loving her at all."
"You were—are—so fiercely, fiercely loved."
"My sister’s magic. Too smart for her own good, that one."
"One would think that after almost three hundred years as a vampire, I’d stop feeling like a human."
"The magic in this room, I knew, wasn’t meant for me. My blood was close enough to let me in, but it was wary about me."
"It was just like the wedding, when I’d seen Simon talking to Oraya and suddenly not a single other thing in the world mattered."
"My skin felt itchy, the air too thick, like the atmosphere itself was heavy with magic."
"My teeth ground as my impatience rose. It was unnaturally silent down here. I couldn’t hear even the faintest echo of the world above."
"My worst fear for so damned long. Neculai looking into my eyes and telling me that my crown cursed me to become just like him, or that I would lose it because I couldn’t be."
"The unnatural stubbornness of the darkness had, apparently, broken, because now the cold light bloomed through the shadows."
My Mother of the Ravenous Dark," I screamed. "I call upon you, Goddess of Night, of Blood, of Shadow.
"A dead lover can never break your heart."
"Love without vulnerability. Love without risk."
"Spoken by someone too young to see the ugliness of its decay."
"People who have something to prove are the most useful kind."