Throne of Glass

After all, you aren’t Adarlan’s Assassin for nothing.

“My name is Celaena Sardothien,” she whispered. “But it makes no difference if my name’s Celaena or Lillian or Bitch, because I’d still beat you, no matter what you call me.”

He didn’t know why, but seeing her made him feel like a man.

I am Celaena Sardothien, Adarlan’s Assassin. If these men knew who I was, they’d stop laughing. I am Celaena Sardothien. I am going to win. I will not be afraid.

When she awoke every morning, she repeated the same words: I will not be afraid. For a year, those words had meant the difference between breaking and bending; they had kept her from shattering in the darkness of the mines.

“Perhaps if we had a private lesson in your chambers,” he said smoothly. “Tonight.”

“I’ll be waiting.” She curled her hair around a finger.

There was something great and deadly concealed within her, and he didn’t like it.

She was moving fast—fast like a dancer in a temple ritual, fast like a snake in the Red Desert, fast like water down the side of a mountain.

You are, of course, free to read as many of the books in the castle library as you wish, but I command you to read these first so that we might discuss them.

Still, the image haunted his dreams throughout the night: a lovely girl gazing at the stars, and the stars who gazed back.