Kestrel's cruel calculation appalled her. This was part of what had made her resist the military: the fact that she could make decisions like this, that she did have a mind for strategy, that people could be so easily become pieces in a game she was determined to win...

— Marie Rutkoski

Kestrel's eyes slipped shut. She faded in and out of sleep. When Akin spoke again, she wasn't sure whether he expected her to hear him.' I remember sitting with my mother in a carriage.' There was a long pause. Then Akin's voice came again in that slow, fluid way that showed the singer in him. 'In my memory, I am small and sleepy, and she is doing something strange. Every time the carriage turns into the sun, she raises her hand as if reaching for something. The light lines her fingers with fire. Then the carriage passes through shadows, and her hand falls. Again sunlight beams through the window, and again her hand lifts. It becomes and eclipse.' Kestrel listened, and it was as if the story itself was an eclipse, drawing its darkness over her.' Just before I fell asleep,' he said, 'I realized that she was shading my eyes from the sun.' She heard Akin shift, felt him look at her.' Kestrel.' She imagined how he would sit, lean forward. How he would look in the glow of the carriage lantern. 'Survival isn't wrong. You can sell your honor in small ways, so long as you guard yourself. You can pour a glass of wine like it's meant to be poured, and watch a man drink, and plot your revenge.' Perhaps his head tilted slightly at this. 'You probably plot even in your sleep.' There was a silence as long as a smile.' Plot away, Kestrel. Survive. If I hadn't lived, no one would remember my mother, not like I do.' Kestrel could no longer deny sleep. It pulled her under.' And I would never have met you.

— Marie Rutkoski

Little Fists, what's wrong?

— Marie Rutkoski

Music made her feel as if she were holding a lamp that cast a halo of light around her, and while she knew there were people and responsibilities in the darkness beyond it, she couldn't see them. The flame of what she felt when she played made her deliciously blind.

— Marie Rutkoski

Of course having a baby derails the writing process for some time. And I will be the first to say that I have essentially no social life, because there's just nothing left after being a mom, professor, and writer. I used to be big into rock climbing. No more. A lot falls by the wayside.

— Marie Rutkoski

People of the hundred," he said, using an ancient Terrain phrase Akin was surprised he knew, "who leads you?" So many cried Akin's name that it no longer sounded like his name.

— Marie Rutkoski

She'd betrayed her country because she'd believed it was the right thing to do. Yet would she have done this, if not for Akin? He knew none of it. Had never asked for it. Kestrel had made her own choices. It was unfair to blame him. But she wanted to.

— Marie Rutkoski

She’d felt it before, she felt it now: the pull to fall in with him, to fall into him, to lose her sense of self.

— Marie Rutkoski

She focused on that nothingness, imagined it as ink spilling over everything she could possibly think or feel.

— Marie Rutkoski

She had dreams that shamed her in the morning, dreams where Ronan gave her a white powdered cake, yet spoke in Akin's voice. I made this for you, he said. Do you like it? The powder was so fine that she inhaled its sweetness, but always woke before she could taste.

— Marie Rutkoski