Kimberly

“Silla gasped. “Wha-what’s that?”
“What’s that?” repeated the creature in an appalled voice. “I’m not a what. I’m a who.”
“That’s Rykka,” said Harpa, waving a hand. “She is a smoke spirit.”
Silla clasped her hands together, her mouth falling open. “Ashes, but you are darling!”
Rykka erupted into flames that quickly burned out. “I’m no darling. I’ll burn you alive!”
― Demi Winters, Kingdom of Claw

“Nervousness means there’s a fear to be faced ahead, Diago. The man who is never nervous, never does anything hard. The man who is never nervous, never grows.”
― James Islington, The Will of the Many

“The oldest argument for doing something wrong is that everyone is doing it. To dismantle what they have built would have required the agreement of every man who had spent his life building it," agrees my father softly. "It would have required them to give up all they have striven their entire lives to gain. And they would have needed to do it, largely, for the benefit of those at whose expense it originally came.”
― James Islington, The Strength of the Few

“Grief, my mother once told me, is love’s most honest expression. The last and hardest aspect of truly, truly caring for someone. She said it at her own mother’s funeral rites, tears in her eyes even as she tried to comfort a boy too young to understand why he was so sad, why his grandmother couldn’t be there anymore. She explained through choking sobs that without grief, love would be meaningless. Because it is impossible to truly love something that cannot be lost.”
― James Islington, The Strength of the Few