I love the heart that is within you,” Cartier said, smiling as his tears fell. “I love the spirit you are forged from Brienna MacQuinn. If you were a storm, I would lie down and rest in your rain. If you were a river, I would drink from your currents. If you were a poem, I would never cease to read you. I adore the girl you were, and I love the woman you have become. Marry me. Lead my lands and my people, and take me as yours.
There is steel within you.
We all hold secrets like breath.
I am the evening to your dawn, the thorns to your roses. You and I are bound together as brothers through her. And she lives because of me. I want you to know that before you kill me. She lives because I love her.
She walks with grace upon the clouds, and the stars know her by name.
If you were a storm, I would lie down and rest in your rain. If you were a river, I would drink from your currents. If you were a poem, I would never cease to read you. I adore the girl you once were, and I love the woman you have become.
That is a true gift, to help others see the world in a different way.
As for my part, I was books and journals and loose papers.
This is how we prepare for war, I thought as a dark peace wove between the queen and me. This is how we face the unexpected – not by our swords and our shields and our armor. Not even by the woad we paint upon our skin. We are ready because of sisterhood, because our bonds go deeper than blood. We rise for the queens of our past, and for the queens to come.
It will make you colder. But even the deepest of ice eventually gives way to fire, Clementine.
This place was dark and quiet with dreams.
Perhaps love was not something easily forgotten, even when it had burned down to ashes.
She stumbled to her feet. The world spun for a moment – melting stars and a vermillion sunrise and the flap of a bird’s wings.
Be patient, be shrewd.
I was content to watch the sun continue her arc across the sky, weaving long tendrils of grass together as I reflected on all that had come to pass, a faithful dog at my side.
The mare and I took to the fields, chasing after the sun in the west, following the promise of blue wildflowers.
Welcome home, my old menace.
I lay down in the grass, my eyes growing heavy with exhaustion, and I looked to the mountains, now darker than night against the constellations. And I wondered what sort of things would haunt my sleep, if I ever gave my mind and heart the chance to dream.
Let us make our names exactly what we want them to be.
The spirits felt his attention shift from them to her. The woman with hair like moonlight, the woman made of sharp beauty.