We love until we do not. For us, love doesn’t fade gradually. It snaps like a branch bent too far.
I hate you,” I breathed into his mouth. “I hate you so much that sometimes I can’t think of anything else.
There you are,” Cardan says as I take my place beside him. “How has the night been going for you? Mine has been full of dull conversation about how my head is going to find itself on a spike.
Desire is an odd thing. As soon as it’s sated, it transmutes. If we receive golden thread, we desire the golden needle.
We don’t need to be good. But let’s try to be fair.
The only way to end grief was to go through it.
The point of a fight is not to have a good fight, it’s to win.
I feel like a constellation of wounds, held together with string and stubbornness.
Seelie and Unseelie, Wild Folk and Shy Folk, I am glad to have you march under my banner, glad of your loyalty, grateful for your honor.” His gaze goes to me. “To you, I offer honey wine and the hospitality of my table. But to traitors and oath breakers, I offer my queen’s hospitality instead. The hospitality of knives.
I stand in front of my window and imagine myself a fearless knight, imagine myself a witch who hid her heart in her finger and then chopped her finger off.
The Folk doubtlessly learned this lesson long ago. They do not need to deceive humans. Humans will deceive themselves.
And the single last thing in my head: that I like him better than I’ve ever liked anyone and that of all the things he’s ever done to me, making me like him so much is by far the worst.
Cardan looks at me as though he’s never seen me before. He looks at me as though no one has ever spoken to him like this. Maybe no one has.
People said that video games were bad because they made you numb to death, made you register entrails splattering across a screen as a sign of success. In that moment, Val thought that the real problem with games was that the player was suppossed to try everything. If there was a cave, you went in it. If there was a mysterious stranger, you talked to him. If there was a map, you followed it. But in games, you had a hundred million billion lives and Val only had this one.
No matter how careful I am, eventually I’ll make another misstep. I am weak. I am fragile. I am mortal.
He looks like a faerie lover stepped out of a ballad, the kind where no good comes to the girl who runs away with him.
There’s a monster in our wood. She’ll get you if you’re not good. Drag you under leaves and sticks. Punish you for all your tricks. Anest of hair and gnawed bone. You are never, ever coming... home.
I want to tell you so many lies.
Children can have a cruel, absolute sense of justice. Children can kill monsters and feel quite proud of themselves.
Instead of being afraid, I could become something to fear.