Sara Raasch Quotes

I close my eyes, back straight, face impassive. When I look, I will see someone capable and composed, a warrior and a leader all in one.

That's how we all are, too hard for what we should be. We should be a family, not soldiers. But all that really connects us is stories, and memories, of what should be.

No matter our dire circumstances, no matter our shared upbringing, no matter the chill his smile sends over my body, he's still him, and I'm still me, and yes, he needs to have a female heir someday, but with a proper lady, a duchess or a princess - not the girl who spars with him.

It's so cold that foreigners have to wrap in layers of fur to walk from building to building, while our natural Winterian blood keeps us warm even in the worst conditions. And snow is everywhere, always, so much that the grass beneath it is white from lack of sun. An entire kingdom wrapped in an orb of eternal winter.

Even the strongest blizzards start with a single snowflake.

You don't know anything, Meira, and I'm sorry if this...is hard for you to accept, but it will happen. You wanted to matter to Winter? This is how Winter needs you.

Horrible things don't happen in crowded places; they happen in the hollows of the world, where it's just a victim and an attacker and no one to hear any screams. "Hang

And I had one of the guards tend to this." Mona lifts my chakram. "It's sharpened." Mona is my favorite.

Sometimes placing our belief in something bigger than ourselves helps us get to a point where we can be enough on our own, magic or no magic.

She drew a breath and her lips parted in two words that rebounded through his body.
"Kiss me," she said.
So he did the only thing he could do...

Summer Kingdom farthest west, Autumn next, then Winter, and finally the Spring Kingdom on the Destas Sea.

Lifetimes have changed in what feels like a heartbeat.

I have no idea how to go about bridging the distance between us- I just keep telling myself, maybe foolishly, that when he's ready, he'll talk to me again.

The question tumbles out of my mouth like a smooth stone in a stream, its edges worn clean by how often I roll it around in my head.

That, I think, i a truer mark of belonging somewhere - being willing to do anything, everything, that needs to be done, regardless of what I want.

cup my hands over my face and exhale, inhale, exhale again. Just keep breathing. No matter what happens, no matter who turns on me, no matter what pompous swine thinks he has power over me, I am still me. I will always be me. Who

Someday we will be more than words in the dark.

Feeling like you're enough has nothing to do with actually being enough --you choose whether or not you are.

I'm tired of fighting myself - I have far too many enemies, far too many obstacles, to spend so much energy wrestling myself into submission. I have far too few friends to alienate those closest to me. I need to start trusting them. And if they break . . . We'll just have to pick up the pieces together. I

Mather smiles at me through it, some of his tension softening before he drops his head in a small bow. "My queen," he says in response.

LIke we had never loved each other at all.

In the face of all that has happened, it feels good, really good, to just breathe for a moment.

All those practice fights when it was just us, two children pretending to be soldiers. Or two soldiers pretending to be children.

This day has done its best to pick me apart, one emotional event after another.

This was the difference between a free kingdom and slavery, happiness and misery, life and death.

In a burst of movement I'm up the crates, scaling the wall, and rolling onto the tiles of the roof next to me, a handful of stories in the air.

When someone goes on a long journey, those who stay behind wish them the energy of a wildfire. The power to take things that try to hinder you --- wind, thrashing enemies --- and use them to make you stronger. The power to burn so brightly that all who look will wonder how darkness ever existed in the same world as you." She puts a hand on my shoulder, but her resolve breaks, her eyes glassy. "Scorch this world, Winter queen.

I may be alone, the stone may not be magic, but I am not weak.

We'll handle the future one thing at a time.

Everything really is about choice, even beyond the magic's rules.

Fear is a seed that, once planted, never stops growing.

I wanted to be a soldier. Someone who would earn standing in Winter. Someone Sir would look at with pride. Someone Mather would look at and -

You are not what you've done. Who you are right now, this moment, is who you choose to be.

Mather wrapped his fingers around her wrist and pulled her forward, cupping the back of her head as he slid his face down to hers. He hovered just shy of her lips, panting, chocking because, ice above, this moment - this was everything, the entirety of his life expanding from this one act, revolving around her because she was at the center of everything good that had ever happened to him.

You forgive yourself for what you've done," Edda told her. "You admit mistakes. You learn from them. And you improve.

That's not fair, throwing out compliments like that. Do you know how dangerous those things can be?

It feels so wrong and yet so wonderful, how much I need to smile at him. Something

There will always remain differences that can't be glossed over with smooth words.

Isn't this a little... morbid?"...
"Morbid?" I mange half a smile. "Or cathartic?"
"Most cathartic things are morbid," he amends. "Healing through melancholy."
I roll my eyes. "Leave it to you to find something poetic about slicing off the heads of snowmen.

I drop down the tower and roll on the roof, breaking into a run, the cold night air blowing me faster, the darkness and gleaming stars taking me somewhere I don't have to feel.

I take the chakram, my eyes on Mather. "I'm not me without it, am I?"
A smile flips across his face before he shakes his head. "You're perfect the way you are.

Every moment we have is one more moment that can't be taken from us.

Knowing is a worldwide pursuit.

All I ever wanted was for you to look at me.

I'm asking you to love me and let me... die.

You may have trapped me in this... but you aren't the first man to underestimate me, so may I advise you to start treating me with a little more respect, King Noam.

He is an anchor too. Something to hold on to when all other things drag me down.

That's how relationships work – when one person is blind, the other must see for them. When one person struggles, the other must remain strong.

He didn't want to fight for her. He wanted her to want him, and she didn't.

The library door is already open when I dash in, but the room is empty. Books line shelves three floors high, and windows just as tall let in rays of dying sunlight. Three balconies wrap above me and a grand piano stands in the center of the bottom level, but there are no people, not even a servant dusting old books in a corner.

He leaves. Just like that. No final good-bye, no last, lingering glance.
Like we never loved each other at all.

Angra wanted to break me.
But he only made me unbreakable.

If stubborness were all that was needed to be a good queen, I'd rule the world.

I know there are things you aren't telling me. Big things…Sir, I will find out. I only hope your reasoning is good enough for me to forgive you.

I was right --skirts are inventions meant to make running harder.

I just like imagining the possibilities. That's part of freedom too --getting to dream, and knowing it could happen if I want it to.

Soon he'll know the blizzard started with me.

...As if it's all so easy. If it's so easy, why don't we talk about it more?"

"It hurts too much," Mather says. Just that simple.

That makes me stop. I meet his eyes, a long, careful gaze. "Someday it won't hurt."

The promise we refugees always make one another - We'll be better . . . someday.

What defines us is not our ability to never let them break us-what defines us is not letting them own us.

Most cathartic things are morbid.

I'm not just me anymore. I'm a whole kingdom, and I can't make mistakes.

You've fought for Winter so spectacularly, and I am more proud than I have ever been to call you my son. But don't forget to fight for yourself as well--there is no shame in that

Just because it wouldn't cure everything doesn't mean it wouldn't make things better than they are.

Mather lifts a white eyebrow. "You don't have to actually yell, if you don't want to. Slightly elevated whispering would be fine.

Books in towering stacks lean against the fireplace and on small end tables, and crowd the bookshelves so tightly I fear the entire structure will burst in an explosion of paper and dust. They're the large books too, great archaic things that look so old, so fragile, that I worry I might disintegrate them just by breathing too hard.

The Winter we know has always been one of our own creation, a kingdom built on dreams. So you're right, Feige. We're all Children of the Thaw. Our own hybrid of the past and the future.

Death has a way of finding those who welcome it.

And Giselle just saw the Cordellan heir give away pieces of Winter.
Theron had no right to do this.

They make decisions; they mold your future. The trick is to find a way to still be you through it all.

I don't need made-up strength. I'm strong enough on my own - me, Meira, no magic or conduit or anything.

No apologies. No matter what happens, I will never, not in a thousand tragic outcomes, ever regret loving you.

The others set up all this because they want me to know that what I did was important - important enough to burn coal.

But it doesn't feel important. Not like it should.

I'm reminded now, watching the coals burn, of why I never feel like I truly belong to Winter. I want to understand all this as deeply as Sir and Alysson and everyone else, a reminder of a time when everything was how it should be, but all this is wasted on me, someone whose only connection to Winter lies in stories told by others. I thought that if I had a hand in saving Winter, I'd feel like I deserve it, the kingdom everyone else remembers. I thought I could fill the void left by my lack of memories with purpose. That's what I've always told myself: if I matter to Winter, Winter will matter to me. And today I mattered to my kingdom.

Then why don't I feel anything more for the fire pit than the slight burn on my finger?

I'm at the center of this, a weird possessive feud between the Winter king and the Cordellan prince.

The world is full of lovely people, Meira. I bet somewhere there is an Autumnian girl wanting to have skin the color of snow just as you want skin the color of earth.

You act as though love is a goal you only achieve after so long spent working at it. And yes, work is involved, but at the end of it all, love is a choice - the kind you have with a spouse, with your people, with yourself. If you acted on those things only when you felt them, you'd be like most people - eternally waiting for a feeling that may or may not come. But if you choose, every day, to love yourself

I can weave threads of myself into a tapestry already designed by others.

It doesn't matter what I would do with magic, because leaders are valued for the wrong things.

Use id not a right, Queen Meira --it is a privilege.

To break one's mask in the presence of someone you reject is an act of permanent separation. To say that you are finished with them in your life, so much so that you do not worry about them seeing your true face. You'll never see them again, so your secrets are nothing in their hands.

Anything that lives here has to be just as harsh and determined as the sun, born of a fiery stubbornness that is either extremely brave or extremely stupid.

We need to face what we are. All of what we are, especially the parts that hurt.

My bare arms are only a relief for the first few minutes before the unobstructed sun finds my fair skin, and I swear I can hear the rays chuckle with delight at such a tasty meal.

My sister used to say you could tell a person's character by what they considered their weaknesses, rather than their strengths.

No one should be forced to be something they aren't.

Someday, we will be more than just words in the dark.

That's what I'm fighting for.
Possibility.

I want to be someone worthy of my kingdom. I want to be someone worthy of /you/.

Dendera silences me with a hand on my cheek. "You listen to me, Meira Dynam. Yes, you have made mistakes, but I have watched you succumb to this role over the past few months, and that, I believe, is the biggest mistake you have made. The biggest mistake we all made. We've all been afraid, and Meira, you look at me. You saved us. You, this beautiful, wild girl before me - you saved us. So be you again, and whoever that is will be exactly what we need.

It is amazing what you can hide when no one knows what to look for.

So tired of Noam and Herod and Sir and Angra and all these arrogant, puppet-master men who hold all the strings and refuse to give them up.

I am mistakes and victories and death and life. I am competent and powerful and strong, and whatever this war brings my way --even death-- I will face it like the queen I am.

Holding on to some part of your past even if it means also holding on to the pain of never again having it. That pain is less horrible than the pain of forgetting.

You may have me trapped in this." I tug him off me. "But you aren't the first man to underestimate me, so may I advise you to start treating me with a little more respect…

Flags snap in the breeze above us, banners with a lavender stalk in front of a golden maple leaf on a green background.

A blade is a blade. Blood can be drawn all the same.

Just someone who gets bounced around in whatever position needs to be filled, used and used like a candle on a moonless night until I burn away into a puddle of compliance and obedience.

slam onto the dusty prairie with a back-popping thud, my blade flying from my hands and vanishing into the thigh-high grass nearby.