41 Quotes About Gauri

You cannot break me with a tale, brother.”“You’re happy, aren’t you? You’re loved. You love others. I think people are convinced that if you asked the sun not to rise, it would stand down for you. But there’s only one story that people like better than a rise to fame—a fall from grace. And I can make it swift. And I can take all this away. You see, a story is not just a thing told to a child before sleep. A story is control.

No magical abilities had ever revealed themselves to me no matter how much I wished for them. But I had a vast source of will. And will was an enchantment that no being could touch because I alone could wield it. That was power.

Sometimes weakness wore the face of strength, and sometimes strength wore the face of weakness.

As I got older, the scar reminded me of what people would choose to see if you let them. So I smiled at the attendant, and hoped that she saw a dimpled grin, and not the scar from a girl who started training with very sharp things from a very young age.

I would be lying if I said I didn’t feel a flicker of envy. But envy did not make one lovelier. Mother Dhina had taught me that. Beauty, coveted though it was, could not outlive you. Only actions would. I never forgot that. In the harem, I might’ve disliked some girls for the ugliness in their hearts, but never for the beauty of their faces.

In the face of that fear, maybe the mind couldn’t help but scrape together feelings toward the only person we had a connection to. That was all it was. A consequenceof survival?

I donned my armor, lining my eyes with kohl until they were dark as death and patting crushed rose petals on my lips until they were scarlet as blood.

People always think killing requires a force: a cup of poison tipped into a mouth, a knife parting flesh from bone, a fist brought down repeatedly.Wrong.Here’s how you kill: You stay silent, you make bargains that peel the layers off your soul one by one, you build a scaffolding of flimsy excuses and live your life on them. I may have killed to save, but I killed all the same.

The Prince was staring at me strangely. No man had looked at me that way. Men had looked at me in admiration, in fear, in lust. They’d looked at me with disbelief at who I was. He looked at me with disbelief at who I could be.