Orlagh Quotes

“King of the land, I am not here to fight your sharp tongue. My blood is cold and I prefer blades.”
― Holly Black, The Wicked King

“They were draped in teeth and bone and skins, with Orlagh leading them. She wore a gown of stingray, and her black hair was threaded with pearls. Around her throat hung the partial jawbone of a shark.”
― Holly Black, How the King of Elfhame Learned to Hate Stories

“Orlagh waits for us in a choppy ocean, accompanied by her daughter and a pod of knights mounted on seals and sharks and all manner of sharp-toothed sea creatures. She herself sit on an orca and is dressed as though ready for battle. Her skin is covered in shiny silvery scales that seem both to be metallic and to have grown from her skin. A helmet of bone and teeth hides her hair.

Nicasia is beside her, on a shark. She has no tail today, her long legs covered in armour of shell.”
― Holly Black, The Wicked King

“I watch grass grow between Nicasia's toes and wildflowers spring up all along the gently rising hills, as I notice the trees and brambles sprout, and as the trunk of a tree begins to form around NIcasia's body.

'Cardan!' she screams as bark wraps around her, closing over her waist.

'What have you done?' Orlagh cries as the bark moves higher, as branches unfold, budding with leaves and fragrant blossoms. Petals blow out on the waves.

'Will you flood the land now? Cardan asks Orlagh with perfect calm, as though he didn't just cause a fourth island to rise from the sea. 'Send salt water to corrupt the roots of our trees and make our streams and lakes brackish? Will you drown our berries and send your merfolk to slit our throats and steal our roses? Will you do it if it means your daughter will suffer the same? Come, I dare you.”
― Holly Black, The Wicked King