That’s what made it so frightening to the lawmakers: Love obeys no laws other than its own.
This was what being cured was like: like being in a fishbowl, circling always inside the same glass.
But from the beginning, I knew that in a world where destiny was dead, I was destined, forever, to love him. Even though he didn’t – though he couldn’t – ever love me back.
That’s the easy thing about falling: there is only one choice after that.
I love you. Remember. And someday, I will find you again.
But if you do believe, then you already know all about magic.
Perfection is a promise, and a reassurance that we are not wrong.
But that’s the problem with love – it acts on you, works through you, resists your attempts to control.
The first one, we’ll name Blue.
The memories seem like snapshots from someone else’s life.
But it’s not about knowing. It is simply about going forward.
For a moment, my heart aches for him. I should never have asked him to join me here; I should never have asked him to cross.
Because if it weren’t for me, Lena and Alex would never have been caught at all. I told on them. I was jealous.
Until, one day, she wasn’t.
I think of Grace and feel a sharp pain in my chest.
For a split second, he had looked almost like my Alex again.
This is the language of the world before – a world of chaos and confusion and happiness and despair – before the blitz turned streets to grids, cities to prisons, and hearts to dust.
I’m not the Hana everyone told me I would be after my cure.
Over the past week, I’ve accepted that I will never love Julian as much as I loved Alex. But now that idea is overwhelming, like a wall between us. I will never love Julian like I love Alex.
It’s as though the words are trapped, buried under past fears, past lives, like fossils compressed under layers of dirt.