How we cite our quotes: (Story.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
When Kizzy was a little girl, she had asked once if she could have that knife when her grandmother died, and her grandmother had answered, "Sunshine, I'll need it where I'm going. Get your own damn knife." (1.1.43)
Kizzy's grandmother isn't the kind of old lady who sits around at home watching soap operas and making cookies. No, she's the kind of old lady who has faced down goblins in her lifetime and carries a knife wherever she goes… just in case.
Quote #2
She stared at him, and at the periphery of her vision something glinted. It was the little silver knife, still impaled in the rind of the cheese. Knife, she thought. Her fingers twitched, wanting to reach for it, as some kind of knowing skimmed the glassy surface of her mind. (1.3.71)
As enamored as she is with Jack Husk, Kizzy can't help but think about plunging that little cheese knife deep into his heart. That's because the ghosts in the cemetery are trying to send her a message: They want her to kill him before he can kill her. Too bad she doesn't listen.
Quote #3
If an English soldier had lived through the bloodiest war the world had ever known and made his way half around the planet to fall in love with this particular girl and goad her into fulfilling her curse, well, Vasudev had only that made bastard Chance to thank for it, and he did. (2.7.1)
After all of the gore and death that James has witnessed, it's no wonder that he's ready to fall in love and live out his happily ever after. It's just his bad luck that he ends up falling in love with someone who has the power to kill him with the sound of her voice.
Quote #4
Inside the ballroom the British were very still. They had sunk to the floor, some still joined in the embrace of the dance, leaning together on their knees like marionettes at rest. Others had fallen over, and the ladies' ankles, protruding from their skirts, were very pale. A fly sauntered down the bridge of a nose. All their eyes were open. (2.10.4)
What a grotesque scene. After Anamique stops singing, she realizes that all the guests at her eighteenth birthday party—including her family and fiancé—are dead. Worst birthday ever.
Quote #5
She'd been told since she was a suckling that there are a hundred things the Druj can do with eyes! They can fish out your soul and keep it for a trophy, or they can pass visions in and plant dreams that will grow in the dark like toadstools. They can pluck out your eyeballs and put them in their pockets, or they can whisper spells that will turn your glance into a curse to wither crops and cripple horses! (3.3.10)
The Druj are into some pretty gross stuff. These immortal beings obviously have way too much free time on their hands if they're going around collecting peoples' eyes like buttons. What ever happened to stickers?
Quote #6
Druj wear humans. They aren't supposed to do it but they do, and they wear them harshly, for fighting and rutting and dancing and other such things as make mortal blood flow fast. And when they're through with them, they leave them where they found them, flow back into their own cold bodies, and return to the forest. (3.3.14)
Talk about a violation of personal space. The Druj like to try on human bodies like new coats with absolutely no thought for the poor souls. How rude and invasive, right? It's no wonder that Mab hated her time at Tajbel.
Quote #7
The kitten landed on its feet, took a tottering step, then another. Bewildered, it looked back at Mab with its big golden eyes, and then there was a flash of long white arm through the balusters and it was gone.
A pitiable mewl, a crunch, and a waft of stench. (3.6.34-35)
The beasts of Tajbel are basically a more terrifying version of the troll under the bridge myth. They writhe around under the bridge, reaching up to grab any creature that comes along that they can kill and eat. Yikes.
Quote #8
She had a trespasser. She was crushed down inside herself, tamped down, creased, torn, bruised. That first time the Queen entered her, Mab knew little else but her shock, little but the cold and the ache, but she would soon grow accustomed to it. It was the new shape of her life. (3.6.53)
When the Druj Queen takes over Mab's body without warning, it's terrible and painful. Although she's not beating or starving Mab anymore, it's another disturbing form of abuse for the girl to endure.
Quote #9
The Queen was inside of her and Mab was as powerless over her own body as if she were merely its shadow. Dimly she saw her own painted arm reaching for the boy, but she could barely feel his skin beneath her fingertips. It was the Queen who felt what her fingers felt as she traced them over his sharp young clavicles, his heartbeat in his thin chest as clear and fast as a bird's. (3.8.19)
When the Druj take over human bodies and use them for sex, it's the most traumatizing thing that they can put their "pets" through. If Mab ever felt any love for the Druj Queen, it's now vanished. She's been horribly cruel.
Quote #10
He lived. Druj are not so easy to kill. Only fire can accomplish it, or the severing of the head from the neck. Isvant did neither of these things; he only raked Mihai's chest from collarbone to navel and sank his fangs into the muscle of his shoulder. It was not pleasant, but it was no risk to Mihai's life. (3.15.1)
As a Druj Mihai can feel pain, but he doesn't have to worry about being taken out in hand-to-hand combat. He might get hurt, but the nice thing about immortality is that death is one less thing to worry over.