“Arin, are you all right?""How?" He managed. "How did her arm break?""She fell of a ladder."He must have visibly relaxed, because his cousin raised her brows and looked ready to scold. "I imagined s...”

“I want to know everything about you." So he told her. The stars, too, seemed to listen.”

“Arin. I've wanted to do this for a long time."Her words silenced him, steadied him.Antecipation lifted within her like the fragance of a garden under the rain. She sat at the piano, touching the ke...”

“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 Arins throat, just as it had when she had a...”

“He told himself a story. Not at first. At first, there wasnt time for thoughts that came in the shape of words. His head was blessedly empty of stories then. War was coming. It was upon him. Arin h...”

“You will be lonely, but you'll become strong.”

“Only he who has no use for the empire is fit to be entrusted with it.”

“A man who does not like power will suffer from its cruelty.”

“Yes, my eyes are closed to your light. I am a beast, a nigger. But I can be saved. You are sham niggers, you, maniacs, fiends, misers. Merchant, you are a nigger; Judge, you are a nigger; General, ...”

“The sky was a feather blanket of clouds, save for one blue hole in the fabric. A blue cloud in a white sky.”

“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 peopl...”