Laureen

“I was too young to know the truth then. That victory meant another’s defeat, and sometimes our own defeat. That winning meant sacrifices, and sometimes ones that even our own people were not willing to make. That in war, someone always paid.”
― Carissa Broadbent, Daughter of No Worlds

“Once, many years ago, he had told me that his grandfather used to say that every moment in life was a coin with one dark side and one light. They fell on the ground with one side facing up, but the other always lay beneath it, there, but hidden. Serel always saw both sides of the coin, even when fate handed him nothing but darkness.”
― Carissa Broadbent, Daughter of No Worlds

“Once I’d thought that love was the sum of its parts, the result of a collection of traits and experiences, like a structure steadily built from bricks layered over bricks. If you collect enough of them, there is love. But that had been a child’s view of the world. The bricks were important, but what they created was more than just a pile of stones. It was the difference between a house and a home. If the building burns down, something is still there that makes it home.
If the memories are gone, something is still there that makes it love.”
― Carissa Broadbent, Mother of Death & Dawn

“Your people have never been more in need of someone to believe in."
"The mere idea of that someone being me makes me a little ill."
"It may seem unkind to say this, Max, but the way it makes you feel is perhaps the least important thing right now."
A petulant part of me wanted to argue with her. But she gave me a deadpan stare that cut off my unspoken retort with, I escaped slavery, killed my master, forced a foreign country to take me seriously, traded away my autonomy, led a revolution, overthrew an empire, and then followed you back to your stupid broken country to support you only for you to whine about how you don’t “feel” like you can do this?”
― Carissa Broadbent, Mother of Death & Dawn