thoughts while reading

quotes

Alexis Michaels's parents were certain their son didn't know what he was doing when he tried to drown his therapist.
They were wrong. 
He knew exactly what he was doing.

"Touch her and I'll drown you in your own blood."

Alexis had lived a fraction of his life and he already felt overwhelmed on most days, uncertain how long he could endure it.
Was that what it felt like to grow up? Alexis thought he had been forced to do all of that already, his childhood exchanged with premature scepticism and wisdom. But how did he have much more growing up to go? In his darkest moments, did he even want to?

'I didn't come this far just to come this far.'

"Why me? Is it even stable?"
"About as stable as your mental state."
"That doesn't fill me with much confidence."

"Be the bigger person. I always am and I'm barely five foot."

Alexis breathed it in with a slight smile on his face, and admired the primal, natural beauty of world beyond Protegere, a sight more encapsulating than anything he thought could be possible.
Until Demi arrived.

"Why won't you kiss me?" 
"Because once I start, I fear I won't ever be able to stop."
"I won't ask you to."

Loving him will be the death of you.

"Send me up there so I can kill him. I'll freeze his heart to ice, I'll drain the blood from his body, I'll make sure he stays like that forever, frozen in agony for what he did."

His existential crisis had come at an inconvenient time.

"You don't have to get yourself killed to prove you're not a villain."

Oh, how the descent into darkness was paved with broken promises and abandoned oaths.

thoughts while reading

thoughts while reading

quotes

It wasn't until he was glaring down at Jude, standing waist-deep in river water, fighting the current, that he realised he was in trouble. 
She ought to be nothing. She ought to be insignificant. She ought not to matter.
He had to make her not matter.
But every night, Jude haunted him. It was too much, the way he thought about her. He knew it was too much, but he couldn't stop.
It disgusted him that he couldn't stop.

"Why didn't you hate everyone?" he asks. "Everyone, all the time."
"I hated you," Jude reassures him, bringing her mouth to his.

Cardan congratulates himself on his skill at passing for human. Of course, he has no human money. But the High King of Elfhame refuses to pay with glamoured leaves, as though he were some common peasant. He hands over glamoured gold instead and walks our with his purchases, feeling smug.

"I think you have iron poisoning," she tells him, which could be true but is still a hurtful thing to say when he is making perfect sense.

   "You didn't hear the story I told," he goes on. "A shame. It featured a handsome boy with a heart of stone and a natural aptitude for villainy. Everything you could like."
   She laughs. "You really are terrible, you know that? I don't even understand why the things you say make me smile."

thoughts while reading

quotes

I feel as though I am dreaming away my days, restless, never fully awake.

"I knew you liked her," says Locke. "That's why I had to have her first. Do you remember the party in my maze garden? How I kissed her while you watched?"
"I recall that your hands were on her, but her eyes were on me" Carden returns.

"Greetings, Your Majesty, you betraying toad."

"The only danger anyone has ever been in at a Council meeting is of being bored to death."

"It was terrifying watching you fall. I mean, you're generally terrifying, but I am unused to fearing for you."
"Mortals are fragile."
"Not you. You never break."

"I didn't mean to hurt you. I didn't think I could hurt you. And I never thought you would be afraid of me."
"Well, I was hurt, and yes, you scare me. You've always scared me. I was afraid of you even when you were tied to that chair in the Court of Shadows. I was afraid of you when I had a knife to your throat. And I am scared of you now."

"Be welcome on the Isle of Ismire. To you, I offer honey wine and the hospitality of my table. But to traitors and oath breakers, I offer my queen's hospitality instead. The hospitality of knives."

"It's you I love. I spent much of my life guarding my heart. I guarded it so well that I could behave as though I didn't have one at all. Even now, it is a shabby, worm-eaten, and scabrous thing. But it is yours. You probably guessed as much. But just in case you didn't."
I can't believe he just said that and then just walked out, leaving me reeling. I am going to strangle him.
You love him, too. You've loved him since before you were a prisoner of the Undersea. You loved him when you agreed to marry him.
Once this is over, I will find the bravery to tell him.

When he kisses me, I feel as though I can finally breathe again. 

thoughts while reading

thoughts while reading

quotes

"Kiss me again," he says, drunk and foolish. "Kiss me until I am sick of it."

I still feel the warm pressure of his fingers against my skin. Something is really wrong with me, to want what I hate, to want someone who despises me, even if he wants me, too. My only comfort is that he doesn't know what I feel.

"I hate you," I breathe into his mouth. "I hate you so much that sometimes I can't think of anything else."

"I wasn't kind, Jude. Not to many people. Not to you. I wasn't sure if I wanted you or if I wanted you gone from my sight so that I would stop feeling as I did, which made me even more unkind. But when you were gone—truly gone beneath the waves—I hated myself as I never have before."

"It tastes like dirt."
"It is dirt."