He shot back the drink, swallowing his thoughts along with it. Dreaming was for people with nothing better to do.
You’re even more painful to look at than she is.
She was indeed beautiful, as if someone had taken the scientific measurements of perfection and used them to mold a single ideal specimen. Her face was slightly heart-shaped, with high cheekbones barely flushed. Auburn hair fell in silken ringlets to her waist and her unblemished ivory skin shimmered like mother-of-pearl in the sunshine. Her lips were red red red, looking like she’d just drunk a pint of blood.
When she was in the middle of a hack, it tended to fill up her brain until her vision hummed with coding and mathematics, skipping ahead to each necessary task faster than she could complete them. It tended to leave her in a state of drained euphoria.
Cinder pressed a hand against the bars, but the soldiers pulled her away, forming a protective wall between her and the barricade. As if she was worth protecting. Cinder tried not to be annoyed.
She could be anyone. Become anyone. The thought both sickened and frightened her, but the resolve made her calm again.
Hundreds of thousands of people, going about their lives. Day after day. Year after year. Generation after generation. Somehow, humanity had managed to build all of this. Despite everything that had tried to get in its way. Somehow, they prevailed. They continued on.
It’s good to be queen.
Cinders. Embers. Ashes. Michelle hoped that whatever strength had allowed this child to survive the fire all those years ago was a strength that still burned inside her. That it would go on burning, hotter and hotter, until she was as bright as the rising sun. She.
Right is always right. Except when left is right, naturally.
Prince Kai?” Peony spun toward her so fast, she tripped on the skirts of Adri’s kimono and fell, screaming, onto her bed. “Who’s Prince Kai?” she yelled, struggling to sit back up. “Only my future husband!
There was a freedom in anonymity. There was power in not having to answer to anyone.
She heard Thorne say something about freeze-dried cardboard and Iko accuse him of being insensitive to those without any taste buds at all.
Oh, no, she isn’t quite as useless as that,” Aimery said. As Winter stared, a thin crimson line drew itself across his throat, blood bubbling up from the wound. “The prettiest girl on all of Luna? She will make some member of this court a happy bride someday, I should think.” “The prettiest girl, Aimery?” Levana’s light tone almost concealed the snarl beneath. Aimery slipped into a bow. “Prettiest only, My Queen. But no mortal could compare with your perfection.
A happy king makes for a happy kingdom.
Maybe there is no amount of magic that could ever make this a possibility,’ she whispered against his jaw. He was trembling, but so slightly she could only tell when she stood so close. ‘If I am not to have happiness, let me at least have a purpose. Let me give you the heart of a queen.
She could be a fire hazard. Maybe we should remove her from the ship before she spontaneously combusts.
My heart is not a game piece, to be played and discarded at will.
Then, between the heartbreak and the loneliness, there was love. So open and intense it stole Levana’s breath away.
Wolf had blue-checkered fabric tied around his waist.