Halea Fields

“But theirs had always been a broken country. It had never been unified, not truly; it had only ever been held tightly together by steel and blood, a facade of internal unity, while factions always threated to split from within. Rin had forced those tensions to the surface, and then to their breaking point. She'd forced the Nikara to confront the greatest lie it had ever told about itself — that there had been a united Nikara Empire at all.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Burning God

“She bent most of the rules. She broke the rest.”
― V.E. Schwab, A Gathering of Shadows

“She's the only divine thing he's ever believed in. The only creature in this vast, cruel land who could kill him. And sometimes, in his loveliest dreams, he imagines she does.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Burning God

“Naughty John, Naughty John, does his work with his apron on. Cuts your throat and takes your bones, sells 'em off for a coupla stones.”
― Libba Bray, The Diviners