nini

“Alina nodded. "The real question is how you're going to outdo this gown for the royal wedding."
"Don't get ahead of yourself," Zoya said. "Nikolai hasn't asked."
"Can you blame him?" Genya said. "He hasn't had much luck with proposals."
Alina snorted. "Maybe he should have offered me a dynasty and not a piddly little emerald.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Rule of Wolves

“Genya—” David tried.
“Don’t you dare,” she said roughly, tears welling up again. “You never looked at me twice before I was like this, before I was broken. Now I’m just something for you to fix.”
I was desperate for words to soothe her, but before I could find any, David bunched up his shoulders and said, “I know metal.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Genya cried.
David furrowed his brow. “I … I don’t understand half of what goes on around me. I don’t get jokes or sunsets or poetry, but I know metal.” His fingers flexed unconsciously as if he were physically grasping for words. “Beauty was your armor. Fragile stuff, all show. But what’s inside you? That’s steel. It’s brave and unbreakable. And it doesn’t need fixing.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Ruin and Rising

“Sorry,” I mumbled.
“Maybe you’re hungry,” said Zoya. “I always get mean when I’m hungry.”
“Are you hungry all the time?” asked Harshaw.
“You haven’t seen me mean. When you do, you’ll require a very big hanky.”
He snorted. “To dry my tears?”
“To stanch the bleeding.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Ruin and Rising

“Most women suffer thorns for the sake of the flowers, but we who wield power adorn ourselves with flowers to hide the sting of our thorns”
― Leigh Bardugo, King of Scars