Don't let the hard days win.

Why should I bother defending myself," Nesta said with lethal cold, "to a male who is so puffed up on his own sense of importance there's barely enough space in the room for his enormous head?

But I wouldn’t sit in my room, couldn’t allow myself to mourn and mope and weep and sleep. So I would venture out, even if it was an agony…

That girl that had needed to be protected, who had craved stability and comfort . . . she had died Under the Mountain. I had died, and there had been no one to protect me from those horrors before my neck snapped. So I had done it myself. And I would not, could not, yield that part of me that had awoken and transformed Under the Mountain.

A queen who owned her body, her life, her destiny, and never apologized for it.

He said soflty, "I love it when you look at me like that." That purr in his voice heated my blood. "Like what?" "Like my power isn't something to run from. Like you see me.