Em

“You did not let me keep my name, so I will strip you of yours. In this world you are what I say you are, and I say you are a ghost, a long night's fever dream that I have finally woken up from. I say you are the smoke-wisp memory of a flame, thawing ice suffering under an early spring sun, a chalk ledger of depts being wiped clean. I say you do not have a name.”
― S.T. Gibson, A Dowry of Blood

“In the world I knew, there were three reasons a person could be wanted: for profit, pleasure, or power. If you could satisfy only one, they used you. Two, they saw you. Three, they served you.”
― Margaret Owen, Little Thieves

“That was the look of somebody resigned to being the monster they knew they were.”
― Caitlin Starling, The Luminous Dead

“Even if Alistair was sick of twisting himself into something cruel, he didn’t know who he was otherwise. Goodness served no purpose in the tournament. And no matter what he felt for Isobel, she was still an opponent.
And it wasn’t as though Isobel actually returned those feelings, anyway.”
― Amanda Foody, christine lynn Herman, All of Us Villains