Kiersten White, And I Darken

"Did you do this?”“There are other ways to beat someone than with fists.” Radu poked her in the side with a finger. She surprised him by laughing. He stood up straighter, a proud grin at having surprised and delighted Lada bursting across his face. She never laughed unless she was laughing at him. He had done something right!Then the lashings began. Radu’s smile wilted and died. He looked away. He was safe now. And Lada was proud of him, which had never happened before. He focused on that to ignore the sick feelings twisting his stomach as Aron and Andrei cried out in pain. He wanted his nurse—wanted her to hold and comfort him—and this, too, made him feel ashamed. Lada watched the whip with a calculating look. “Still,” she said. “Fists are faster."

"What is wrong with you?” Radu sounded on the verge of tears. “Why do you have to destroy everything good we have here?”“Because,” Lada said, voice flat with the sudden wave of exhaustion pulling her heavily to the ground. “We have nothing. Can you not see that?”“We have Mehmed!”Lada looked up. The stars were static, still and cold in the night, all the fire gone from the sky. “It is not enough,” she said."

"You once told me some lives are worth more than others. How many deaths before the scales tipout of our favor?”She had no answer."

"There is no such thing as cheating. There is only winning or losing."

"If you are too weak to stand being hit and too stupid to avoid it, then you deserve more pain."

"Weakness is an irresistible lure."

"A brother,” she said, her voice soft. The baby started to cry, a weak, garbled sound that worried the nurse. Lada’s scowl deepened. She slapped a dimpled hand over his mouth. The nurse pulled him away quickly, and Lada looked up, face contorted in rage.“Mine!” she shouted. It was her first word. The nurse laughed, shocked, and lowered the baby once more. Lada glared at him until he stopped crying. Then, apparently satisfied, she toddled out of the room."

"Marry me, Lada. It is the perfect solution." Lada laughed. Mehmed's smile grew, until he realized her laugh was not a sweet breeze of delight, but a brutal desert wind carrying stinging sand in its wake. "I will never marry."

"And so she cut out her heart and offered it as a sacrifice. She would pay whatever price her mother Wallachia demanded.“Make me prince,” she said without feeling."

"Lady's mouth tasted like blood and iron all the time now. It tasted like defeat."

"She swung her fist at Nicolae’s head. He raised an arm to block the blow, and she delivered a killing stab with her wooden dagger. Nicolae laughed, staggering dramatically to the ground. “Dead, again, at the hands of the ugliest girl in creation.” He stuck out his tongue, face contorted in a grimace. Lada kicked him in the stomach. “I am no girl. Who is next?”The other Janissaries, gathered in a loose circle around Lada and Nicolae, shuffled their feet and avoided eye contact. Nicolae pushed himself up on an elbow. “Really? Cowards!”“I still have bruises from the last time.”“I cannot sit without pain.”“She fights dirty.”Ivan did not even respond, having never forgiven Lada for besting him when they were introduced. He refused to fight her and rarely acknowledged her presence. Lada laughed, showing all her sharp teeth. “Because when you are on the battlefield, honor will mean so much. You will die with a blade between your ribs, secure in the knowledge that you fought with manners.” She picked up her dull practice sword, abandoned on the edge of the circle, and swung it through the air, sweeping it across the line of the Janissaries’ collective throats."

"Because I am in love with you. Because I cannot be around you for fear you will finally see what is written across my heart. Because the pain of you is one I cannot bear"

"None of them are real to me.” He paused again, placing a hand flat against the door. “You are the only real thing in my life.”Radu gasped with the sheer physical pain the words sent through him. But the sound of his agony was covered by that of the door opening. Mehmed reached in and pulled Lada out to him, and then his mouth was on hers and his hands were in her hair and he was holding her so tightly, so tightly, and they stumbled back into Lada’s room and closed the door. Radu tripped forward, feet dragging, until he stood outside the room. He wanted to be inside it. He wanted to be the only real thing to Mehmed, just as Mehmed was the only real thing to him. He wanted—No, please, no. Yes. He wanted Mehmed to look at him the way he had looked at Lada. He wanted Mehmed to kiss him the way he had kissed Lada. He wanted to be Lada. No, he did not. He wanted to be himself, and he wanted Mehmed to love him for being himself. His question, the question of Mehmed, was finally answered, piercing him and leaving him shaking, silent, on the floor. He did not want this answer."

"The last time she was up here, she had been... staring up at the sky and dreaming of stars. Now, she looked down and plotted flames."

"People respond to kindness. They trust a smile more than a promise that you will leave them choking on their own blood."

"The price of living seems to always be death."

"Those same fists had always defied everything expected of her."

"Lada made her face stone, her heart a mountain. A mountain that would never be pierced to let cold, clear water flow. “Nothing holds me here."

"Fire burned in her heart, and her wounded soul spread out, casting a shadow like wings across her country."

"I am yours,” she whispered. The words cut like knives, barely out of her mouth before he stole them, sealing them with his own lips."