Kate Stradling > Quotes

“Broken wings can heal, A bird is meant to fly”
― Kate Stradling, The Heir and the Spare

“I was honestly trying to decide if I could wish you happiness with another man, or if someone in your village needed to have an unfortunate accident. It was a serious moral delimma.”
― Kate Stradling, The Legendary Inge

“Then I plop into the sand, look up at the vast starry sky above, and cry until my tears run dry. I am alone, as I always have been.”
― Kate Stradling, Namesake

“The world doesn't die with its leaders. It merely changes, and our best goals must be to steer it on an upward path, so that we leave it better than we found it, and so that it has ample chance to improve beyond our lifetime instead of falling into chaos without our steadying hand.”
― Kate Stradling, The Heir and the Spare

“That’s hardly an answer.”

“It wasn’t a very good question.”
― Kate Stradling, The Heir and the Spare

“To show mercy?” Inge finished. “You think he deserves it?” Raske shook his head. “None of us deserves it. That’s the whole point.”
― Kate Stradling, The Legendary Inge

“His sacrifice for the empire became mine as well, only I never had a choice, and he did.”
― Kate Stradling, Guardian of Ruses

“What does it say about me, that he sees food as his greatest rival for my affection? We make a ridiculous pair.”
― Kate Stradling, Namesake

“Love unfulfilled is still love and I am a better person for it.”
― Kate Stradling, Namesake

“When he looked back to Clervie, she gasped as though scandalized. “You would send me into a closed carriage with only men?”

“I think they’d have more to fear than you do,”
― Kate Stradling, The Heir and the Spare

“People don’t like when others live differently.”
― Kate Stradling, The Legendary Inge

“Across the distance, they appeared youthful and carefree, an innocent set of friends instead of a collection of monsters and tormenters.”
― Kate Stradling, The Heir and the Spare

“My father used to say it was cyclical, that prosperity would breed corruption, which would in turn breed calamity.”
― Kate Stradling, The Legendary Inge

“Is everything all right?” He asked.
“No, but maybe it will be.”
― Kate Stradling, The Heir and the Spare

“Forget- me- not’— I like that for a dagger. It leaves a lasting impression.”
― Kate Stradling, The Legendary Inge

“She hadn’t lived since her childhood either. Why had she not contracted the mark back then and died with her mother? If this was to be the end, it should have come sooner. It might have spared her years of misery and loneliness.

And she was so very alone. As she lay staring at the raftered ceiling, she knew more keenly than ever how alone she was. The rest of the staff, tucked safely away inside the inn or the stable loft, slept peacefully oblivious to her midnight turmoil. No one would come looking for her. No one would care when she died.

In an instant, her panting breaths twisted into feeble laughter. She was alone, just as she always had been, and fighting against things she had no power to overcome.

Everything had changed, but nothing had changed at all.

The laughter grew in strength until she gasped, on the verge of hysterics. It didn’t matter whether she was alone or surrounded by scores of friends and loved ones. She would die either way. That naked truth infused her with a blissful, ludicrous peace.

Death was the one constant of the deathmark, the one thing she could count on. For Nell, who had lived her whole life trying to protect herself, who had never been able to count on anyone or anything, that realization was most liberating.

She would die.

But she wasn’t dead yet.

The events of her life fluttered through her mind—her distant, naïve childhood, the bleak orphanage, the years at Baker’s Inn. She had wasted time catering to fear. She had been timid, docile, no better than a mule. She had done everything in her power to protect herself from ridicule and punishment, but where had that caution brought her?

Sentenced to death, with a million regrets piled on her shoulders.

“No more.” She forced those words through her lips, determination etched between her brows. “I will fear no more.”

Spoken aloud, the oath seemed binding. Death would come—she had no power to stop it—but until the day it collected her, she would live as she saw fit.”
― Kate Stradling, Deathmark

“Just enjoy the ride,” Nea told Inge. “None of us knows what lies at the end of it, so there’s no point worrying.”
― Kate Stradling, The Legendary Inge

“It’s rubbish— I already told you that!” he added when he saw that she was about to burst with fury. “It’s just, once someone’s decided that they want to believe something, that’s what they’ll believe.”
― Kate Stradling, The Legendary Inge

“Even so, Iona wouldn’t concede the worthiness of the match. Jaoven and Lisenn deserved to wed. Perhaps one would kill the other and inadvertently bless the world. At the very least, their union would spare any other prospective partners from a terrible fate.”
― Kate Stradling, The Heir and the Spare

“Lisenn, true to her nature, played with ruthless efficiency veiled behind an engaging laugh,”
― Kate Stradling, The Heir and the Spare

“If Lisenn hears even a whisper of this plot, she’ll kill me.”
“She already tried,” Aedan said. “Do you think you’re safe because you happened to survive?”
― Kate Stradling, The Heir and the Spare

“What’s wrong?” he asked upon noticing his pacing prince. “Princess troubles,”
― Kate Stradling, The Heir and the Spare

“Bina had dressed her in a dove-colored gown, the red embroidery on its sleeves and hem the only decoration that separated it from a mourning dress. Usually she avoided such a bright color, even in ornamentation and especially when she might cross paths with Lisenn. The gray of the dress itself could cause no complaint, but that red might earn her a few bruises. Or another attempt on her life. She didn’t know anymore.”
― Kate Stradling, The Heir and the Spare

“What a pity there had been nothing handy to throw at him.”
― Kate Stradling, The Legendary Inge

“.She would make his life miserable, eventually. And perhaps he would do the same to her. They were both pretending, after all.”
― Kate Stradling, The Heir and the Spare

“The great sorrow of Ingrid Norling was that she was not Ingrid Norling at all. The surname had been adopted in the middle of the night,”
― Kate Stradling, The Legendary Inge

“Certainly one of his men had just found him in an infinitely humiliating situation, but Gunnar was demonstrating a sufficient level of terror. It probably hadn’t even occurred to him to ask how two small boys had managed to overpower a seasoned warrior in the first place.”
― Kate Stradling, The Legendary Inge

“No one deserved the rough-housing, or the ridicule, or that wretched yearly Hunt. If dignity can only earned by rank, then it's worthless.”
― Kate Stradling, The Heir and the Spare

“I wish you no ill, truly.”

“And yet, you’re trying to smash my head to pieces,”
― Kate Stradling, The Legendary Inge

“The captain left with his back straight and his nose in the air. In his wake, Dagmar poked her head around the doorframe. “You never can tell with His Majesty, can you?”after which she retreated to the mystical trappings of her tower.”
― Kate Stradling, The Legendary Inge