Все мы злодеи

“Briony hesitated. But then she gazed into Alistair’s face, and saw grief and fear and—love. Or at least something close to it.”

“But that was a lie. Everything had changed. Two weeks had passed since the tournament began, and all Briony had to show for it was a death she hadn’t meant to happen. A friend who would forever hate her, a sister who would never forgive her. A theory held together by nothing except how desperately she wanted to be right.”

“This tournament wasn’t a place for heroes. It never had been. All the grand deeds her family had celebrated had been bloodshed just like this. And they could call it what they wanted, but Briony knew what they really were.
Villains. All of them.”

“Isn’t it better to have hope?”
“But this hope is empty,” she said. “Why can’t you understand that?”

“Isobel might not have ever called the Macaslan estate her home, but she had still been raised on a legacy of corpses and filth and rot, scavenging in the most revolting places for magick so her family could thrive. And in a choice between an ugly reality and a pretty delusion, Isobel would always choose the truth.”

“Now every fleeting happy memory was a wound. He should know. He’d already been mortally wounded once tonight.”

“Per old superstitions, a champion’s body is always buried face-down. If they attempt to claw their way from their graves to seek vengeance, they will only dig deeper into the earth.”

“He tried to remind himself that Alistair would always be a Lowe, and Gavin couldn’t—wouldn’t—let himself feel anything but hatred for him. Not when it was too easy to wonder if it had ever really been hatred at all.”