Megan Tee

“Look,” Petru said, pointing up at the sky.
Among the first stars beginning to pierce the night sky, there was one falling. It burned, light trailing behind it as it slowly moved through the gathering darkness.
“It is an omen,” Daciana said from her seat in front of Stefan on his horse, her voice quiet with wonder.
Lada closed her eyes, remembering another night when stars fell from the heavens. She had almost been happy, then, with the two men she loved. Now she had neither of them. But she had known that night what she knew now: nothing but Wallachia would ever be enough.
The stars saw her. They knew.
She lifted a hand in the air toward the burning sign as she rode forward, letting everyone see her pointing to the omen of her coming. Everyone would witness it.
They were her people. This was her country. This was her throne. She needed no intrigues, no elaborate plans. Wallachia was her mother. After everything she had been through, all she had done in pursuit of the throne, she was left with one thing only: herself.
She was enough.”
― Kiersten White, Now I Rise

“What if she remembered the fortress wrong? What if she climbed up and the sun did not come out? What if it did, but it felt the same as any other sunrise?
She could not risk tainting that precious memory. She clutched the locket around her neck, the one Radu had given her to replace her old leather pouch. Inside were the dusty remains of an evergreen sprig and a flower from these same mountains. She had carried them with her as talismans through the lands of her enemies. Now she was home, and still in the land of her enemies.
She would climb that peak one day, soon. When it was all hers. She would come back, and she would rebuild the fortress to honor Wallachia.”
― Kiersten White, Now I Rise

“We are never more ourselves than when we think people aren’t watching.”
― Stuart Turton, The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

“If this isn’t hell, the devil is surely taking notes.”
― Stuart Turton, The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle