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.

A thousand desperate wishes have been spoken on these shores, and in the end they were all the same: Make me someone new.

But hope rises like water trapped by a dam, higher and higher, in increments that mean nothing until you face the flood.

None of this had been fated; none of it foretold. There had been no prophecies of a demon king or a dragon queen, a one-eyed Tailor, Heartrender twins. They were just the people who had shown up and managed to survive.But maybe that was the trick of it: to survive, to dare to stay alive, to forge your own hope when all hope had run out.

I will always seek to make it summer for you.

What could Zoya say to her? To any of them How could she give them hope she didn’t have?

She always picks the most boring things on the rack, always in basic black. If it's shaped like a sack, even better.""Maybe it feels easier that way, just being invisible instead of always worrying what people think of you."Nim's voice was surprisingly emphatic. "But that's a choice too, right? Because people are always going to look. They're always going to judge, so you can say nothing or you can at least answer back.

Don’t ask me to sacrifice the hope of the living for the comfort of the dead.