carolina > Books: fantasy-faves‎ (34)

↳ He’s fire and brimstone. I’m shattered ice. Our collision is steam and destruction, destined to dissipate, but I’ll gladly burn beneath him until t

↳ He’s fire and brimstone. I’m shattered ice. Our collision is steam and destruction, destined to dissipate, but I’ll gladly burn beneath him until the world comes crumbling down.

「 Survival’s funny. Some wear it like a whisper, others like a scream. Mine’s a scorched skeleton of flame-forged rage that keeps me upright. Keeps me moving forward. 」

「 Sadness is like stones that stack inside you, making it harder to move. Ignorance is my self-preservation tonic, and I’ll swear by it until I die. 」

「 You don’t simply scratch an itch with Kaan Vaegor, then throw him away and move onto another. You peel back your skin and open your ribs to the male. You tuck him somewhere deep and safe, fight others off with weapons forged from secrets sharp enough to slice, then perish with those secrets clutched close to your chest 」

「 Either way, there’s no one else I’d willingly serve my heart on a platter to—over and over and over again—like a hopeless, lovesick stray begging for a treat. 」

「 “I don’t understand how you still look at me like you want me.” Silence prevails, tension thickens, his eyes burning embers when he finally says, “Raeve, you could flay me down the middle and I’d still fucking love you.” 」

「 Yet here I am again, standing stationary while Raeve dances around me with my soft heart in her fucking hands, dripping blood all over the floor. Here I am again, looking at her like she crafted the world with a few whispered words, every sweep of her eyes twisting that jagged weapon lodged in my chest. 」

This is the tale of how a chosen one falls. She does it screaming, clawing for her old life with broken fingernails. She does it slowly, over the

This is the tale of how a chosen one falls. She does it screaming, clawing for her old life with broken fingernails. She does it slowly, over the course of decades. And in the end, she takes the whole forsaken world with her.

「 And he was smiling in a way that made the entire world stop, a smile that reminded me of the way the sun looked when it crested the horizon the first time I saw it at the Citadel, and I had thought, I am home. I am home. 」

「 “Do you think that I don’t know what darkness is?” I said. “Why? Because I smile too much? Because I talk too much? It’s my choice to be the way that I am. A choice that I make even when it’s hard. That doesn’t make me weak, Asar.” 」

「 He had devoted himself to fixing the broken things that no one else saw. 」

「 A note of shame imbued his voice. Shame. As if it wasn’t the most compassionate thing someone could do for another being. As if even attempting to help those who were so helpless to all others wasn’t such an act of bravery. 」

「 “Wrote is a strong word. I just . . .” I was too close to him to see him, but I felt his muscles shift as he shrugged. And then he said, after a moment, “I just played the notes that sounded like you.” He spoke the words so softly, with such tender vulner ability. Like a confession to a priest. So kind it hurt. 」

「 “You asked me what love should feel like,” he murmured. I tensed as his lips brushed my inner thigh. “It should make you think of nothing else.” Higher, where the skin was so sensitive that I jolted when he dragged his teeth over it. “It should make you see stars.” 」

「 “What are you doing?” I asked.
“Praying with you,” he said. As if it was obvious.
“I thought you didn’t believe in prayer.”
“I don’t,” he said. “But you do.” Strange how it was this small gesture of kindness that shattered me. 」

࿐ Isn't forever a terrible blessing, and a terribly blissful curse?”

࿐ Isn't forever a terrible blessing, and a terribly blissful curse?”

── .✦ “Things are so much sweeter when they have an ending; things are so much more painful when they can be ripped away.”

── .✦ "What life could we have had where I never told you that I loved you?" Brandt begged, and it was wretched, and undignified, and all of it, every breath of it, for Fox. "What kind of life could have ever been enough if I never confessed that I would love you, Fox, for every day that I walked this earth?”

── .✦ To love, to forgive, to lose, to live it was always a choice, and thus, the fact that he was a mortal was finally one worth celebrating. Because it would end!

── .✦ To have lived is, as he tells it, reward enough in itself.

“Most people are lucky to have even one great love in their life. You have found two.”