Naomi Novik

“Not until I’ve eaten lunch, we won’t,” I said, not pausing: I was chopping carrots.

He muttered something under his breath about recalcitrant idiots.

“Marek, forgive me. Marek—your brother is dead. They killed him in the first ambush, when he went to survey the river.”

I LOVE HAVING existential crises at bedtime, it’s so restful.

And they didn’t stop at safety, either. They wanted comfort, and then they wanted luxury, and then they wanted excess, and every step of the way they still wanted to be safe, even as they made themselves more and more of a tempting target, and the only way they could stay safe was to have enough power to keep everyone off that wanted what they had.

the miracle I still couldn’t quite believe in: I wasn’t alone anymore. They were saving me, and I was going to save them. It felt more like magic than magic.