I never thought that freedom would feel so much like grief.
There are a lot of things I want," I say quietly and deliberately. "But I think I will keep what I have.
Lirralei was a girl of storm--winds and thorns, the musk of the wild rose and the flight of the falcon.
I coudn't be kind to him after what he'd done, couldn't be cruel after what I had done
She dared to cry? On this day of all days? I was the one who would be married at sunset, and I hadn't let myself cry in five years. There was ice in my lungs and in my heart. I was floating. I was swept away, and out of the cold I spoke to her in a v...
And you would know so much about women, locked up in your castle." "Locked up with eight wives. And sometimes I make house calls for my bargainers. There's many a lovely woman desperate enough to bargain with me." This idea had never occurred to me b...
But I can’t . . . I can’t leave anyone to the darkness.
But my family I had always had a duty to love, no matter how they had wronged me.
Why is he scared of the dark?" I meant the words for a joke, but Shade nodded seriously. "Like all monsters. Because it reminds him of what he truly is".
Where you go, I shall go; where you die, I shall die, and there will I be buried.
You deserve all that and more. It made me happy to see you suffer. I would do it all over again if I could.' I realized I was shaking as the words tumbled out of me. 'I would do it again and again. Every night I would torment you and laugh. Do you un...
I hope you aren't planning to order me back to bed." "No, you have far too much crockery at your disposal.
His kindness was only meant to make later torments crueler.
Knowing the truth is not always a kindness.
I remembered Ignifex's smirk and his confident words: I can wait all I want and still have you. And I thought, Here is one thing he isn't getting. Standing on my toes, I kissed Shade on the lips. It was just a bump of my face against his. Despite Aun...
They said that love was terrifying and tender, wild and sweet, and none of it made any sense. But now I knew that every mad word was true.
I remember the hours I had spent in Father's library, drugging myself with books so I could forget my doom for an hour..
Study the sky but never love it,” Father had told Astraia and me a thousand times. “It is our prison and the symbol of our captor.
Almost immediately, I found the red door into the library. I opened it idly- and the breath stopped in my throat. It was the same room I remembered: the shelves, the lion-footed table, the white bass-relief of Clio. But now, tendrils of dark green iv...
