"Midnight in the Royal Castle is not silence; it is a physical pressure settling on the shoulders like a mantle of cold lead."

— Ariadna Zamora

"'The difference,' he continued, and this time his voice trembled, a micro-gesture that betrayed the entire architecture of lies built upon his shoulders."

— Ariadna Zamora

"'The night my family died,' Kaelen began, without raising his gaze from his own hands, where scars shimmered under the moonlight, 'the High Guardians ordered the massacre. It was not a tactical error. It was an execution. I was twelve years old and hid beneath the floor of the main hall while I heard them tear the life from my mother and my brothers.'"

— Ariadna Zamora