Virginia

“Miss Charlotte was often and spectacularly silent. But her silence was that of the woods and hills, a natural absence of speech. The maharani’s, on the other hand, made Mrs. Watson think of the walled forts of Jaipur, a silence that watched and hid.”
― Sherry Thomas, The Art of Theft

“I’ll have you know I am repressed. Shy and repressed. Also, I’m not ready for that kind of commitment. I mean, if I sleep with the entire Black Brotherhood, I just know I’ll feel awkward waking up next to them the next morning. Will they still respect me? What if they want me to meet their mother?” I paused. “Oh hell. I’ve already met their Mother.” Tyentso chuckled. “Bet they dump you the next morning and never write.” “I should be so lucky.” I grinned. “Personally, I kind of think they’d get obsessive and clingy when I tell them I want to see other cults too.”
― Jenn Lyons, The Ruin of Kings

“Hasn’t it always been like this?’ asked Charlotte. ‘Haven’t they always been games that empires play with one another?’

‘Maybe,’ answered Lord Ingram. ‘But it can take a queen-and-country sort like me a while to work that out.”
― Sherry Thomas, The Art of Theft

“There’s a prophecy. Actually no, it’s more like a thousand prophecies. It’s the collected rantings of a thousand people, the demons possessing them, and whole orders of scholars have spent centuries trying to pull any kind of coherent meaning from them. Relos Var and his lord, Duke Kaen of Yor, believe the prophecies refer to an end time, a great cataclysm, when a single man of vast evil will rise up. The ‘Hellwarrior’ will conquer the Manol, strip the vané of our immortality, kill the Emperor, destroy the Empire of Quur, and free the demons. In his right hand he will hold Urthaenriel, and with his left, he will crush the world and remake it as he desires.” Teraeth sipped at his cup. “Presumably by wiping away the old gods and replacing them with himself, as is tradition.”
― Jenn Lyons, The Ruin of Kings