Lindsay

“Cassian told me only twelve have made it this far,' Nesta murmured to her friends. 'We've already earned the title of Oristian just by being here.'

Emerie stirred. 'We could stay up here today, wait it out overnight, and be done at dawn. To hell with any titles.' It was the wise thing to do. The safe thing to do.

'That path,' Nesta said, pointing to a small one along Ramiel's base, 'could also take us down south. No one would go that way, because it takes you away from the mountain.'

'So we'd come all this way and just hide?' Gwyn said, voice hoarse.

'You're hurt,' Nesta countered. 'And that is a mountain in front of us.'

'So rather than try and fail,' Gwyn demanded, 'you would take the safe road?'

'We would live,' Emerie said carefully. 'I'd love nothing more than to wipe the smirks off the lips of the males in my village, but not at this cost. Not if it costs us you, Gwyn. We need you to live.'

Gwyn studied Ramiel's craggy, unforgiving slope. Not much snow graced its sides. Like the wind had whipped it all away. Or the storms had avoided its peak entirely. 'Is it living, though? To take the safe road?'

'You're the one who's been in a library for two years,' Emerie said.

Gwyn didn't flinch. 'I have. And I am tired of it.' She surveyed the blood-soaked leather along her thigh. 'I don't want to take the safe road.' She pointed to the mountain, to the slender path upward. 'I want to take that road.' Her voice thickened. 'I want to take the road that no one dares travel, and I want to travel it with you two. No matter what may befall us. Not as Illyrians, not for their titles, but as something new. To prove to them, to everyone, that something new and different might triumph over their rules and restrictions.'

A cold wind blew off Ramiel's sides.
Whispering, murmuring.

'They call this climb the Breaking for a reason,' Emerie countered gravely.

Nesta added, 'We haven't eaten in days. We're down to the last of our water. To climb that mountain-'

'I have been broken once before,' Gwyn said, her voice clear. 'I survived it. And I will not be broken again- not even by this mountain.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A ​Court of Silver Flames

“Money and titles may be hereditary," she would say, "but brains are not,"...”
― Baroness Emmuska Orczy, The Scarlet Pimpernel

“They seek him here, they seek him there
Those Frenchies seek him everywhere
Is he in heaven or is he in hell?
That demned elusive Pimpernel”
― Baroness Emmuska Orczy, The Scarlet Pimpernel

“Had he but turned back then, and looked out once more on to the rose-lit garden, she would have seen that which would have made her own sufferings seem but light and easy to bear--a strong man, overwhelmed with his own passion and despair. Pride had given way at last, obstinacy was gone: the will was powerless. He was but a man madly, blindly, passionately in love and as soon as her light footstep had died away within the house, he knelt down upon the terrace steps, and in the very madness of his love he kissed one by one the places where her small foot had trodden, and the stone balustrade, where her tiny hand had rested last.”
― Baroness Orczy, The Scarlet Pimpernel