Tiko

“He saw it in her eyes. The anguish, the frustration. The terrible nothing that clawed inside and sought to smother her. She knew. It was there, inside. She had been broken.

Then she smiled. Oh, storms. She smiled anyway.

It was the single most beautiful thing he’d seen in his entire life.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Words of Radiance

“A sign on the door proclaimed: "The countess is NOT to be bothered except in the cases of death, disembowelment, the Apocalypse, or the arrival of her mother.”
― Courtney Milan, The Countess Conspiracy

“One time I was dying in a cage inside a palace that was flying over a magic jungle. And some idiot went in there, chased the palace down, fought his way through hundreds of rakshasas, and rescued me."

"I remember," he said.

"That's when I realized you loved me," I said. "I was in the cage and I heard you roar.”
― Ilona Andrews, Magic Rises

“We'd need to leave fast. The biggest hurdle would be finding a ship. Passages across the Atlantic didn't always work out. The Black Sea wasn't easy to cross either. The ancient Greeks called it Pontos Axenos, the Hostile Sea. In our day and age, Greek myths were lifesaving required reading, and I'd read enough of them to know that the Black Sea wasn't a fun place.

"Where on the Black Sea?"

"Georgia."

Colchis. Bodyguard detail in the land of the Golden Fleece, dragons, and witches, where the Argonauts had sailed and nearly died.”
― Ilona Andrews, Magic Rises