Kaz reached into his coat pocket. "Here," he said and handed Jesper a slender book with an elaborate cover."Are we going to read to each other?""Just flip it open to the back."Jesper opened the book and peered at the last page, puzzled. "So?""Hold it up so we don't have to look at your ugly face.""My face has character. Besides - oh!""An excellent read, isn't it?""Who knew I had a taste for literature?

Nikolai had been told that hope was dangerous, had been warned of it many times. But he’d never believed that. Hope was the wind that came from nowhere to fill your sails and carry you home.

Hope was tricky like water. Somehow it always found a way in.

Just… be careful.’I stared at her, baffled. 'Of what?’'Of powerful men.

I know who I am without anyone there to tell me.

It’s a law of systems,” Wylan murmured. “You build in safeguards for failures, but something in the safeguards ends up causing an unforeseen failure.

What a luxury to turn your back on luxury.

She'd glimpsed true power and she knew it was her one chance to take it.

The servants called them malenchki, little ghosts, because they were the smallest and the youngest, and because they haunted the Duke’s house like giggling phantoms…