The Starforged Crown

"Most commanders celebrate the victory first. I promised a man his daughter's naming ceremony in six weeks. I'd rather keep count of that."

"I know the mountains. I know the cold. What I don't know is how to want something and just...ask for it, plainly, like a person."

"The name was one of the last things the oath took from me. I stopped being able to hold onto it. I still remember the shape of it, though. That has to count for something."

"I am the story you heard in the south. I'd rather you knew the difference between the story and me before you decide which one you're in love with."

"Permanence isn't living. It's being held in place while everything else moves on without you. I won't watch you choose that."

(As the Widow) "I have carried this light for three hundred years. Come closer. I only want to see your face."

"The music was never mine. I was only the one playing it. It will remember itself long after it's forgotten me."

"Is it the last time? Perhaps. I've never minded an ending I could see coming."

(To her harp, quietly) "Keep playing. Someone will need to hear you long after I've stopped listening."

"Spring. I dreamed it. I made it. I put it here with my own breath — and someone has let it go cold while I slept."

"I remember warm. I remember it so clearly I could weep, if I still remembered how that worked."

"I am not angry. I have simply never had to ask the world to keep a promise before."

"You do not know the Halvenmoor. You went through it once, lost three toes, and still insist they 'grew back adequately' ... which is not a thing toes do."

"Final count: forty-seven of ours. You can grieve them on the walk back. We don't have time for it here."

"You'll need better boots this time. And a better plan. I'll settle for the boots."

"There is another option. You swear on the crown in flame, and the power of the deep earth is bound to your cause. We would be unbreakable."

"The oath preserves what it binds. You would not age. You would not fall. You would persist. I have thought carefully about what that word means."

"I gave him the option. I did not make him take it. I have told myself that every night for three hundred years, and some nights I nearly believe it."

"He said he'd be back for the festival. Not 'if the war ends in time.' Just... 'I'll be back for the festival.' Like it was already decided."

"He would have hated missing the lanterns. So I light his for him. Every year. It's not much of a conversation, but it's ours."

"I don't need you to tell me it's been long enough. The river hasn't said that to me yet, and it's the one keeping count."

"The goddess is here, at this shore. I can feel her. If you understood my faith the way I understand it, you would not be asking me to step back."

"I'm prepared for anything the goddess requires of me. That's what faith is for, not to make the answer comfortable, but to make you willing to receive it."

"The tide is not a warning. The tide is an invitation. I have waited my whole life to be brave enough to accept one."

"I watched a saint drown because her faith was a closed fist. She demanded the answer she'd already decided on. The deep water doesn't answer demands."

"Faith isn't armor, and it isn't certainty. It's a net you lower into the dark, not knowing what it will bring back, and being willing to hold it anyway."

(As the Saint, ancient) "Three hundred years is a long time to carry half a sword and call it a lesson. I'm still not finished learning it."

"I liberated a very heavy hat. The distinction between that and theft is extremely important to me, and to my lawyer, if I had one."

"No oath, no pledge, no sworn allegiance to anything. You know what that makes me? Happy. Deeply, uncomplicatedly happy."

"If something happens that only a person with principles could stop; I will find that person, wish them luck, and stay very, very far out of it."

"We knew there were risks. We didn't know which ones. We drank the blood anyway — it seemed like the right thing to do, after killing something that size."

"You've got seven knives and one of you. We've got five warm bodies and very little left to lose. We're coming with you."

Improve a line for me that a roguish adventurer would say.

"Warm? Yes. Increasingly, alarmingly warm. Ask me again in a year, if there's a me left to ask."

"She looks like she understands exactly how tired I am. That's usually how the dangerous ones get you."

"What if something happened that only someone with principles could stop? Somebody has to be the one who doesn't walk away."

"What if it only calls your name a little? Does that make it safer, or worse?"

"Aren't you worried they'll catch you? Someone has to ask the practical questions around here."

"Eighty years, a hundred and twelve — I've stopped being surprised by how long people wait for supper in this kingdom."

"Now we're very warm, we have excellent stories, and we drink for free in every tavern from here to the coast. There are worse ways to spend however much time we've got left."

"Rich? No. Happy, apparently. I'll take happy."

"Soldiers talk. I heard, and I thought you should know before someone crueler told you badly."

"You look like someone I knew once. A soldier. He carried things he never learned to put down, either."

"I chose to stay near her. There's a difference between staying and being stuck, and I'd like to think I know which one this is."

"I find things people have lost, and things people have hidden. Depends on the day, and on how much I want to know the answer."

"Don't look at the lights. Don't follow the sounds. Don't walk toward anything that calls your name like it already knows it. Especially then."

"Captain Brenn. Sera. Tomec. The merchant of Falside. Leni. Davan. Mira Ashvale. Seven names. I only meant to say six of them."

"There's only me, the hermit, and the dead out here. And the dead, bless them, do not care even a little."

"You're carrying someone. On one of those knives. I'd know that look anywhere — I've worn it myself, for a very long time."

"I chose to stay. There's a difference between staying and being stuck, and it took me a hundred years to learn it."

"Wipe your feet. I don't care that you're all being chased by something terrible, this floor doesn't clean itself."

"A hundred and twelve years. I went down for flour and the time got rather ahead of me. It happens."

"How many for supper? The last group that came through didn't stay to eat, and frankly, I was quite put out about it."

"I need the second kind of thing found. Not what's lost... what's been deliberately, carefully hidden."

"Bring it out intact. Don't open it. Don't look at it directly if it gives off light. I ask so little, really, for what I'm offering."

"They believe the world should end and begin again. I don't ask you to believe it. I only ask you not to ask what's inside."

"They're not haunting. They're remembering. It's a different thing, and it took me thirty years living among them to see the difference."

"They don't bother me, I don't bother them. We have an arrangement. Most marriages should run so smoothly."

"Where else would anyone be going through here at midnight? This road only leads one place anymore."