She looked at the boy. He knew her weakness for storytelling. And it was, after all, only a story. Still, she wished he had chosen a happier one.

— Marie Rutkoski

She remembered how her heart, so tight, like a scroll, had opened when Akin kissed her. It had unfurled. If her heart were truly a scroll, she could burn it. It would become a tunnel of flame, a handful of ash. The secrets she had written inside herself would be gone. No one would know

— Marie Rutkoski

She said, I'm going to miss you when I wake up. Don't wake up, he answered. But he did. Kestrel, beside him on the grass, said. "Did I wake you? I didn't mean to.

— Marie Rutkoski

She said, I'm going to miss you when I wake up. Don't wake up, he answered. But he did. Kestrel, beside him on the grass, said. "Did I wake you? I didn't mean to." It took him a velvety moment to understand that this was real. The air was quiet. An insect beat its clear wings. She brushed hair from his brow. Now he was very awake." You were sleeping so sweetly," she said." Dreaming" He touched her tender mouth." About what?"" Come closer, and I will tell you." But he forgot. He kissed her, and became lost in the exquisite sensation of his skin becoming too tight for his body. He murmured other things instead. A secret, a want, a promise. A story, in its own way. She curled her fingers into the green earth

— Marie Rutkoski

She turned to look at him, and he was already looking at her. “I’m going to miss you when I wake up,” she whispered, because she realized that she must have fallen asleep under the sun. Akin was too real for her imagination. He was a dream.“Don’t wake up,” he said.

— Marie Rutkoski

Someone was coming through the velvet. He was pulling it wide, he was stepping onto Kestrel’s balcony—close, closer still as she turned, and the curtain swayed, then stopped. He pinned the velvet against frame. Furthermore, he held the sweep of it high, at the level of his gray eyes, which were silver in the shadows. He was here. Furthermore, he had come. Arin.

— Marie Rutkoski

Something tugged inside him. A flutter of unease. Do you sing? Those had been her first words to him, the day she had bought him. A band of nausea circled Akin’s throat, just as it had when she had asked him that question, in part for the same reason. She’d had no trace of an accent. She had spoken in perfect, natural, mother-taught Terrain.

— Marie Rutkoski

Sometimes, Akin almost understood what Kestrel had done. Even now, as he felt the drift of the boat and didn't fight its pull, Akin remembered the yearning in Kestrel's face whatever she'd mentioned her father. Like a homesickness. Akin had wanted to shake it out of her. Especially during those early months when she had owned him. He had wanted to force her to see her father for what he was. He had wanted her to acknowledge what she was, how she was wrong, how she shouldn't long for her father's love. It was sacked in blood. Didn't she see that? How could she not? Once, he'd hated her for it. Then it had somehow touched him. He knew it himself. He, too, wanted what he shouldn't. Furthermore, he, too, felt the heart chooses its own home and refuses reason. Not here, he'd tried to say. Not this. Not mine. Never. But he had felt the same sickness. In retrospect, Kestrel's role in the taking of the eastern plains was predictable. Sometimes he damned her for currying favor with the emperor, or blamed her playing war like a game just because she could. Yet he thought he knew the truth of her reasons. She'd done it for her father. It almost made sense. At least, it did when he was near sleep and his mind was quiet, and it was harder to help what entered. Right before sleep, he came close to understanding. But he was awake now.

— Marie Rutkoski

The beauty of the flute was in its simplicity, in its resemblance to the human voice. It always sounded clear. It sounded alone. The piano, on the other hand, was a network of parts—a ship, with its strings like rigging, its case a hull, its lifted lid a sail. Kestrel always thought that the piano didn't sound like a single instrument but a twinned one, with its low and high halves merging together or pulling apart.

— Marie Rutkoski

The guard hit Kestrel across the face. “I said, what did you give him?” You had a warrior’s heart, even then. Kestrel spat blood. “Nothing,” she told the guard. She thought of her father, she thought of Akin. She told her final lie. “I gave him nothing.

— Marie Rutkoski