It’s alright, you know... To love him... Please, child, do you think I don’t know you at all? I’m not going to say there is some easy future for you, or even any future at all. I only want you not to punish yourself. You’ve always felt the truth in him, then and now. Your heart is not wrong. Your heart is your strength. You don’t have to be ashamed.
My head feels like a snow globe that’s been shaken, and glitter is swirling around in it like unmoored stars.
And I suppose all the wishes come true,” Minya said, sarcastic. “Of course not, silly girl,” Suheyla retorted. She had not grown up in an era of optimism, but that didn’t mean they’d lived without dreams. “Wishes don’t just come true. They’re only the target you paint around what you want. You still have to hit the bull’s-eye yourself.
He reached for her hand and caught it – lightly – and held it. It was small, smooth, and very real. Up in the citadel, Sarai gasped. She felt the warmth of his skin on hers. A blaze of connection – or collision, as though they had long been wandering in the same labyrinth and had finally rounded the corner that would bring them face-to-face. It was a feeling of being lost and alone and then suddenly neither.
Belief like that, that hasn’t tasted any real hope in centuries, but has been fed and tortured on darker things-loneliness, desperation-it doesn’t simply subside when faced with its own end. It doesn’t accept or adapt, it exists in spite of reason, and will only ever defy it.
There was darkness, and monsters vast as worlds swam in it.
Few will ever witness an act destined to become legend. How does it happen, that the events of a day, or a night – or a life – are translated into story? There is a gap in between, where awe has carved a space that words have yet to fill.
He had crossed continents and drunk starlight from rivers without names. There was no going back from that.
Well, I’m no alchemist,” Lazlo said, affable. “You know me, Strange the dreamer, head in the clouds.” He paused and added with a grin, “Miracles for breakfast.
Strange the dreamer was an artist, too, and he was the antidote to vile.
Those seraphim who escaped into the neighbor world Eretz managed to hold the portal closed, and they held it to this day, pouring their strength into shoring up their sky to keep the darkness at bay. A bold young queen in that distant world was even now training a legion of angels and chimaera to battle the darkness and hopefully destroy it. But that’s another story.
Live bitter, so the crows will have no taste for you when you’re dead.
Your entire being can become a scream. At the edge of a hurled knife, that fast. Karou’s did. She wasn’t flesh and blood in that instant but only air rushing in to gather for a scream that might never end.
Who had ever expended so much passion on a dream, only to stand helpless as it was granted to others? Others, moreover, who had expended no passion on it at all.
She was lonely, and she feared the missingness within her as if it might expand and... cancel her.
What good were bright gods who only watched from afar while dark gods strove every moment to devour you?
It was like dying, but without the consolation of oblivion.
She’d thought that she would do anything for them, but it had never occurred to her that “anything” might mean letting them go.
His shadow splayed out huge before him, and his mind gleamed with ancient wars and winged beings, a mountain of melted demon bones and the city on the far side of it – a city that had vanished in the mists of time.
And the space where his legend was gathering up words grew larger. Because this story was not over yet.