astra inclinant

"Don't you dare fall apart now, dorogaya"

Everything Jude communicated to them indicated that he didn’t want to be helped. And yet he couldn’t accept that. The question was how you ignored someone’s request to be left alone—even if it meant jeopardizing the friendship. It was a wretched little koan: How can you help someone who won’t be helped while realizing that if you don’t try to help, then you’re not being a friend at all? Talk to me, he sometimes wanted to shout at Jude. Tell me things. Tell me what I need to do to make you talk to me.

The land of dreams. Where men and women in white hoods roam the streets to murder Black folks. Where written laws prohibit the Chinese from stepping upon its shores. Where immigrant children are separated from immigrant mothers on Ellis Island, never to be seen again.

“Sring Venka was a prim, spoiled Sinegardian princess turned lethal soldier turned brittle survivor; of course she’d walk into a war zone with red paint on her lips simply because she felt like it.”

"Heaven help me, Shae, I'm going to kill them all."

“After last night, I don’t want to waste time, Lan. I don’t want to be lying on the pavement bleeding out the last seconds of my life thinking I didn’t do everything I meant to. That I didn’t give her this one thing when I had the chance.”

"Even the thickest blood from the womb could run thin if given the empty space to bleed."