Cardan stands, too. ‘Everyone finds different lessons in stories, I suppose, but here’s one. Having a heart is terrible, but you need one anyway.
I always supposed I would be delicious.
I am not weak, he wanted to shout, but he wasn’t sure he could say that aloud, either.
Choose a future, Balekin had commanded him when he’d first brought Cardan to Hollow Hall. But no one chooses a future. You choose a path without being certain where it leads. Choose one way and a monster rends your flesh. Choose another and your heart turns to stone, or fire, or glass.
I don’t know what to apologize for first,” I say. “Cutting off your head or hesitating so long to do it.
Some might think of him as a strong draught, burning the back of one’s throat, but invigorating all the same. You might beg to differ. So long as you’re begging, he doesn’t mind a bit.
I thought you could use a little nonsense,” she told him, which worried him a little.
Not a heart of stone, but a heart of fire.
It was terrifying,” he says, “watching you fall. I mean, you’re generally terrifying, but I am unused to fearing for you. And then I was furious. I am not sure I have ever been that angry before.” “Mortals are fragile,” I say. “Not you,” he says in a way that sounds a little like a lament. “You never break.
I think we should consider our roles as monarchs to be largely decorative. It would be better for the low Courts and the solitary Folk to work things out on their own.
Cardan’s fingers dig into my back. He’s trembling, and whether it is from ebbing magic or horror, I am not sure. But he holds me as though I am the only solid thing in the world.
Children can laugh all day and still cry themselves to sleep at night.
He could no more lie than any of the Folk, but stories were the closest thing to lies the Folk could tell.
I recall that your hands were on her, but her eyes were on me,′ Cardan returns.
I think you have iron poisoning,” she tells him, which could be true but is still a hurtful thing to say when he is making perfect sense.
I have asked you to lie to me in the past, in this very room, but I would beg you not to lie now.
Cardan had trusted Nicasia not to hurt him, which was ridiculous, since he well knew that everyone hurts one another and that the people you loved hurt you the most grievously.
So long as you’re begging, he doesn’t mind a bit.
I have, for mortals, the feeling of falling in love is very much like the feeling of fear.
I am not so arrogant as to have begun my fight with a troll in the middle of the night. And I definitely wouldn’t have managed to talk her to death.