“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. Not that she’d let the Captain know any of that.” 

After a year at Endovier, Celaena is in survival mode and terrified that she is about to be executed. She will repeat her mantra—“I will not be afraid”—several times in the novel, when most acutely stressed. Celaena is afraid to reveal her feelings to Chaol, something she will grow out of as her friendships deepen. 

“She became all too aware of the three long scars down her back. Even if she won her freedom…even if she lived in peace in the countryside…those scars would always remind her of what she’d endured. And that even if she was free, others were not.”

Celaena is thinking of what lies ahead, and what she’s leaving behind at Endovier. Her sense of shared suffering means Celaena takes on the responsibility to help others. The scars on her back are a physical reminder of what she’s endured, and what others still endure.

“Even then, she found the castle tasteless, a waste of resources and talent, its towers reaching into the sky like clawed fingers.”

Celaena challenges Chaol’s moral worldview, in which criminals are the embodiment of evil, suggesting that some immoral acts are perfectly legal. Over the course of the novel, Chaol’s code of ethics will be tested and reformed to accommodate greater nuance.