The Rose and The Dagger

by Renee Ahdieh

E-book edition, 528 pages

Published April 26th, 2016 by Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers

✰✰✰✰

The much anticipated sequel to the breathtaking The Wrath and the Dawn, lauded by Publishers Weekly as "a potent page-turner of intrigue and romance."

I am surrounded on all sides by a desert. A guest, in a prison of sand and sun. My family is here. And I do not know whom I can trust.

In a land on the brink of war, Shahrzad has been torn from the love of her husband Khalid, the Caliph of Khorasan. She once believed him a monster, but his secrets revealed a man tormented by guilt and a powerful curse—one that might keep them apart forever. Reunited with her family, who have taken refuge with enemies of Khalid, and Tariq, her childhood sweetheart, she should be happy. But Tariq now commands forces set on destroying Khalid's empire. Shahrzad is almost a prisoner caught between loyalties to people she loves. But she refuses to be a pawn and devises a plan.

While her father, Jahandar, continues to play with magical forces he doesn't yet understand, Shahrzad tries to uncover powers that may lie dormant within her. With the help of a tattered old carpet and a tempestuous but sage young man, Shahrzad will attempt to break the curse and reunite with her one true love.

“No. He was not here to wreak revenge.
For revenge was trifling and hollow.
No. He was not here to retrieve his wife.
For his wife was not a thing to be retrieved.
No. He was not here to negotiate a truce.
For a truce suggested he wished to compromise.

He was here to burn something to the ground.”

“It was never about belonging to someone. It was belonging together.”

“From the stars, to the stars.”

“As always. As ever. As a rose to the sun.”

“Cut the strings, Shazi. Fly.”

“Ronan's bedroom door burst open. Hanging on the door frame, Ronan leaned out to peer past Gansey. He was doing that thing where he looked like both the dangerous Ronan he was now and the cheerier Ronan he had been when Gansey first met him. "Is Noah out here?"

"Hold on," Gansey told Adam. Then, to Ronan: "Why would he be?"

"No reason. Just no reason." Ronan slammed his door.

Gansey asked Adam, "Sorry. You still have that suit for the party?"

Adam's response was buried in the sound of the second-story door falling open. Noah slouched in. In a wounded tone, he said, "He threw me out the window!"

Ronan's voice sang out from behind his closed door: "You're already dead!”

"It already has," Calla replied. Her eyes opened and fixed on Blue. "And it hasn't yet. Time' circular, chicken. We use the same parts of it over and over. Some of us more than others.”

“I know you think you're a punk," Declan said. "But you aren't nearly as bad ass as you think you are."
"Oh, go to hell," Ronan snapped, just as the alter boys broached the rear doors.
"Guys," Matthew pleaded. "Be holy.”

“Aglionby Academy was the number one reason Blue had developed her two rules: One, stay away from boys because they were trouble. And two, stay away from Aglionby boys, because they were bastards.”

"I know so little about you and it eats at me night and day. Who are you? Why do you infect my mind?"

“Time has a different meaning for me, and these events that seem so monumental in the moment will one day be nothing more than a line in a scroll. These humans are but letters to be inked into history. A hundred years from now, I will be free. I will have forgotten their names and faces, and the struggles they have will not matter. Time has a way of burying things, shifting like the desert and swallowing entire civilizations, erasing them from map and memory. Always, in the end, everything returns to dust.”

"She will be your undoing."

"... But this isn't even about me, or how I feel about you. I want you to live for you because I know there's so much more waiting for you to discover and experience. And you deserve it, you might not think you do, but you do. And I'm here to tell you that you deserve it."