V.E. Schwab

“My point, continued Rhy, is for every ten that worship you, one wants to see you burn. Those are simply the odds when it comes to people like you and I.”

“Kell stared at her, at a loss. Was her bravado a front, or did she truly have so little to lose? But she had a life, and a life was a thing that could always be lost.”

“Lila!" he said cheerfully. "So you aren't a figment of my brothers imagination after all.”

“Everyone thinks I have a death wish, you know? But I don't want to die - dying is easy. No, I want to live, but getting close to death is the only way to feel alive. And once you do, it makes you realize that everything you were actually doing before wasn't actually living. It was just making do. Call me crazy, but I think we do the best living when the stakes are high.”

“Are you ready ?" she asked, spinning the chamber.Kell gazed through the gate at the waiting castle. "No."At that, she offered him the sharpest edge of a grin. "Good," she said. "The ones who think they're ready always end up dead.”

“Dammit Bard, you're going to set the cat on fire.”

“Lila cringed at the ghost of Barron's words, a memory with edges still too sharp to touch.”

“She used to think that if she stole enough, the want would fade, the hunger would go away, but maybe it wasn’t that simple. Maybe it wasn’t a matter of what she didn’t have, of what she wasn’t, but what she was.”

“Well, when you wonder something," said Eli, "doesn't that mean part of you wants to believe in it? I think we want to prove things, in life, more then we want to disprove them. We want to believe.”

“No one suffers as beautifully as you do.”

“There were a hundred shades between a truth and lie, and she knew them all.”

“No,” he muttered, running a hand through his copper hair. “No. No. There are dozens.”“Kell?” she asked, moving to touch his arm.He shook her off. “Dozens of ships, Lila! And you had to climb aboard his.”“I’m sorry,” she shot back, bristling, “I was under the impression that I was free to do as I pleased.”“To be fair,” added Alucard, “I think she was planning to steal it and slit my throat.”“Then why didn’t you?” snarled Kell, spinning on her. “You’re always so eager to slash and stab, why couldn’t you have stabbed him?”

“Some thought magic came from the mind, others the soul, or the heart, or the will.”

“My father was a vulture. My mother was a magpie. My oldest brother is a crow. My sister, a sparrow. I have never really been a bird." Lila resisted the urge to say he might have been a peacock. It didn't seem the time.”

“We still have time," Kell assured him, getting to his feet."How do you know?" asked Hastra. "We can't hear the bells down here, and there are no windows to gauge the light." "Magic," Kell said, and then, when Hastra's eyes widened, he gestured to the hourglass sitting on the table with his other tools. "And that.”

“She handed back the cigar and dug the silver watch out of her vest pocket. It was warm and smooth, and she didn't know why she liked it so much, but she did. Maybe because it was a choice. Taking it had been a choice. Keeping it had been one, too. And maybe the choice started as a random one, but there was something to it.”

“Blood was magic made manifest. There it thrived. And there it poisoned. Kell had seen what happened when power warred with the body, watched it darken in the veins of corrupted men, turning their blood from crimson to black. If red was the color of magic in balance---of harmony between power and humanity---then black was the color of magic without balance, without order, without restraint.”

“He suffered," added Athos softly. "But not like you." He brought his mouth closer. "No one suffers as beautifully as you." There it was, in the corner of Holland's mouth, the crease of his eye. Anger. Pain. Defiance. Athos smiled, victorious.”

“Kell tipped his head so that his copper hair tumbled out of his eyes, revealing not only the crisp blue of the left one but the solid black of the right. A black that ran edge to edge, filling white and iris both. There was nothing human about that eye. It was pure magic. The mark of the blood magician.”

“Everyone's immortal until they're not.”