Adrienne Young Quotes

• “Vegr yfir fjor.” Honor above life.”

  Adrienne Young

  63 Copy to clipboard Copy quote
• “We find things, just as we lose things. If you’ve lost your honor, you’ll find it again.”

  Adrienne Young

  58 Copy to clipboard Copy quote

Advertisement

Advertisement
• “And when he kissed me again, the seconds slowed. They stretched out and made more time. I felt his body against mine, unraveling everything else that was between us, and my soul unwound, threading itself to his. And I let it. I gave myself to him. Because I was already his.”

  Adrienne Young

  27 Copy to clipboard Copy quote
• “I was the ice on the river. The snow clinging onto the mountainside.”

  Adrienne Young

  27 Copy to clipboard Copy quote

Advertisement

Advertisement
• “I feel like…” I caught the sob in my chest and swallowed it, suddenly embarrassed. He leaned in closer to me. “Like what?” My eyes ran over his face. The scruff on his jaw. The dark lashes around his blue eyes. “Like I’m a flame about to burn out.” My voice was so thin it sounded like I could reach out and break it with my fingers. “Like I’m going to disappear.”

  Adrienne Young

  27 Copy to clipboard Copy quote
• “I could still see a young Eelyn standing on the beach turned into the wind, a sword in one hand and an axe in the other. I hadn’t lost her. I hadn’t buried her. I’d only let her change into something new.”

  Adrienne Young

  26 Copy to clipboard Copy quote

Advertisement

Advertisement
• “Home felt an entire world away.”

  Adrienne Young

  21 Copy to clipboard Copy quote
• “I’d envied Iri my whole life for his open heart, and now mine had been pried open too.”

  Adrienne Young

  20 Copy to clipboard Copy quote

Advertisement

Advertisement
• “What are you thinking?” He took my hand.
  “I’m thinking I don’t want to fight anymore.”
  His fingers tightened around mine. It seemed so foolish now, all the fighting.
  All the death and loss and mourning.”

  Adrienne Young

  17 Copy to clipboard Copy quote
• “The writhing, bleeding hole inside of me closed up. I let him erase it. I let him make it go away.”

  Adrienne Young

  14 Copy to clipboard Copy quote

Advertisement

Advertisement
• “The only safety that existed was in being completely alone.”

  Adrienne Young

  13 Copy to clipboard Copy quote
• “I stared at her. “This kind of bond is formed when a soul is broken. It’s formed through pain, loss, and heartbreak. They’re bound by something deeper than we can see. And that made Iri family.”

  Adrienne Young

  13 Copy to clipboard Copy quote

Advertisement

Advertisement
• “He looked at me with a hundred stories lit behind his eyes.”

  Adrienne Young

  12 Copy to clipboard Copy quote

• “I’ve thought of you every day.” He watched as I wiped the tears from my face. “Fiske’s father gave me a choice to be traded back to the Aska, Eelyn.”
  “What?” I could feel the words prying my mind open.
  “I couldn’t go. I couldn’t leave this place.” He reached to take my hand. “The path of my soul has taken a turn, just as yours has.”
  “This is not the same.” I glowered at him. “I want to go home.”
  “I know. But you will never be the same. You will never be the same person you were.” He paused. “You are seeing the truth. I see you thinking it, everyday.”
  “What truth?”
  “That they’re like us.”
  I put my face into my hands, trying to escape what he was saying. Because it made me feel like the world was turned sideways. Like everything I’d ever been taught didn’t fit into the shape of this world.
  “What are you thinking now?”
  The weight of it fell from my head, down into the rest of my body. The words were small but they were true. “I’m thinking that I wish you’d died that day.”

  Adrienne Young

  10 Copy to clipboard Copy quote

Advertisement

Advertisement
• “I sat down on the cot, curling up on my side and tried to stay quiet as I wept. But the thing writhing inside me was too angry to be calmed. It was too hurt to be hushed. It was a living, breathing thing and it was trying to swallow me whole. And maybe it would. I cried until I couldn’t cry anymore and only the sound of the fire remained.”

  Adrienne Young

  10 Copy to clipboard Copy quote
• “I wept. A dark, scared cry rising up out of me. He held me together, keeping the pieces from falling down around us. And I cried until I couldn't feel. I cried until I couldn't think.
  The moon rose up over my broken home and I broke with it.”

  Adrienne Young

  10 Copy to clipboard Copy quote

Advertisement

Advertisement
• “Like a weary bird flying out over the most desolate sea, I finally had a place to land.”

  Adrienne Young

  10 Copy to clipboard Copy quote
• “Home was a ship that was at the bottom of the sea, where my mother's bones lay sleeping.”

  Adrienne Young

  9 Copy to clipboard Copy quote

Advertisement

Advertisement
• “My mother had loved Saint with a love that could set fire to the sea”

  Adrienne Young

  8 Copy to clipboard Copy quote
• “Like light cast over the morning water, it became new. Every moment that lay ahead, like an uncharted sea. this was a new beginning.”

  Adrienne Young

  8 Copy to clipboard Copy quote

Advertisement

Advertisement
• “What he was saying-the things he told me-was his way of showing me he trusted me. It was also his way of giving me the match. If I wanted to, I could burn him down. But if we were going to do this, I would have to be his safe harbor and he would have to be mine.”

  Adrienne Young

  7 Copy to clipboard Copy quote
• “The fog sat on the field like a veil, but we could hear it. The blades of swords and axes brushing against armor vests. Quick footsteps in sucking mud. My heart beat almost in rhythm with the sounds, pulling one breath in and letting it touch another before I let it go.”

  Adrienne Young

  7 Copy to clipboard Copy quote

Advertisement

Advertisement
• “My father’s rasping whistle caught my ears from down the line and I searched the dirt-smeared faces until I found a pair of bright blue eyes fixed on me. His gray-streaked beard hung braided down his chest behind the axe clutched in his huge fist. He tipped his chin up at me and I whistled back—our way of telling each other to be careful. To try not to die.”

  Adrienne Young

  6 Copy to clipboard Copy quote
• “When he was gone, I reached into my pocket and pulled my idol of Iri free. The wood was smooth and shining where I’d held it in prayer under every moon that rose in the sky. I carried it against my heart as I fought. I slept with it beside me. We became warriors together. And long before that, we were friends.”

  Adrienne Young

  5 Copy to clipboard Copy quote

Advertisement

Advertisement
• “I don’t belong to you.”
  “Yes, you do.” He pulled the hair back out of my face so he could look at me. “Like I belong to you.”

  Adrienne Young

  5 Copy to clipboard Copy quote

Advertisement