More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
“Eventually everything connects…” —Charles Eames
I realized I would always be a much scarier beast than my mind and the evil it can produce.
It has always been better to remain quiet than risk speaking words no one believes.
You’ll never know all our secrets, but you can admire our truths.
I can’t breathe, ever. Why can’t anyone see that? Can they not see me turning purple? The hands of my mind choking me?
“Life left you empty so that you’d have room to fill it. We are only hollow if we allow ourselves to remain that way.”
I’d always thought it was beautiful, his grief. A living reminder of a love lost too soon.
“I didn’t.” I scoff, “So, you’re dead?” “You don’t know?” Once again, I can hear the smirk. In my mind, I can see only his lips, tilted up in the corners. “They say I’m dead on the inside.” “They call me cursed. I wonder which is worse?”
“I had to learn how not to live for the trauma and loss. I’m living in spite of it. Don’t let him win.”
Life is loss. The in-between spaces in time are just us figuring out how to cope with it. Distractions for all the inevitable experiences, hiding from the fact that we all die in the end.
When do parents realize that, after a while, we start analyzing them, too?
My father will be nothing if not strong-willed until the day he dies, and I’ll do everything in my power to give him that.
Humans are not my thing. Have never been my thing, will probably never be my thing. I understand emotions, feel them, but I actively hate them every second of the day. And people have a shit ton of them. People have manuals. You can’t override their systems, and half the time, what you see is never what you actually get.
Death isn’t the enemy. It’s time.
“You have good instincts. The best, Silas. Trust them, always. You will not fail,”
They are brothers to me. Each of them. Thicker than any blood.
I’ve always believed love is like water, the way it flows between bodies and souls. You can’t stop the flow of it because one pathway is closed off. It just finds another exit.
I get these impulses to scream until glass shatters, or break everything in my line of sight, just so they all can see what really lives inside of me.
“This is the last time I come back to that fucking place. Even if it kills me.”
“It’s all a plot to trick, to get karma to stop fucking me.”
“In 1851, Adolf Anderssen sacrificed both rooks and the queen to deliver a checkmate against Lionel Kieseritzky.”
“The final move, 23.Qh6#, gave it the name the Immortal Game.”
I’m not the princess. I’m the rotten apple. The poison made to demolish happily ever afters. I’m no good for him, for anyone. “Let go of me.”
“Someone told me I survived for a reason. It was this, teaching you. Give yourself grace to find what yours is. Heal on your terms, not mine.”
Every man I have ever loved has either disappeared, died, or lost their mind.
“First night back and Rook’s already killed someone.” Alistair’s jaw twitches, running a frustrated hand across his mouth. “This place is a black fucking hole, not a home.”
“Needing revenge means I still give a fuck. I’m out of fucks to give
I want him dead. No longer existing on this rotten planet. Out of my life. Out of my fucking head. I’m not afraid of him. I’m tired of the games.
The scent is proof of all the beauty found in violence.
“No one will believe that I’m unfaithful to my wife. They all know what happens when someone touches what belongs to me.” “I am not yours to own.” I seethe, my jaw tightening in anger.
“In private, you can call all the shots. But to the rest of the world? You’re fucking mine, and I don’t share.”
“It will break my mother’s heart if she knows I married for anything but love. I won’t do that to her. That’s my only condition.”
His loyalty speaks louder than words ever could, and his unwavering urge to protect those around him mirrors my own.
“No falling in love. I’m not saying this to tempt you. This applies to both of us. This needs to remain as fake as possible, or else I’m gone.”
“Is that your greatest fear, Hex? Falling in love?”
“You can’t be afraid of something you’ve never known,” I reply truthfully.
Is anyone truly who they pretend to be?
Whatever happens in the dark stays here, I tell myself. I could kiss him in the shadows, and we’d forget it happened when they disappear.
“Rumor says if you walk where I’m hiding at midnight, you can hear the screams of a girl whose unrequited love made her take her own life.”
“Inevitable checkmate.”
“It means you’re mine now, Hex.”
“Silas, I promise to be your peace when the world provides only war. To be your secret keeper and safe haven. Today, I vow to be the one person who accepts you for who you are and who you will become.” She glances up at me, holding my gaze as she speaks the last line. “Till death do us part.”
“On this day, I vow to make your rage my own, to weather the storm of your revenge and keep you forever safe. I promise to stand by you. No matter what comes, you will never be alone. Till death do us part.”
“We’ll live, we’ll remember him, and we’ll be happy because that’s what he wants for us. All he’s ever wanted. It won’t be easy, and there will be days you struggle more than others, but learning to love the memory of someone you’ve lost helps. It just takes time.”
“You’re my wife, Coraline Hawthorne. If I want to cover myself in the blood of a thousand more men to protect you, I will,” I tell her. “They cannot hurt you without having to answer to me.”
“She still lives in the Springs. We could—” “You’re not allowed to stab her. If you get arrested, Thatcher is going to blame us, and I am not dealing with his melodrama,” Sage interjects before Lyra can finish her sentence, making her roll her eyes.
“You’ve never watched The Craft? 1996 cult classic?”
Old dogs can’t learn tricks in a day, but there’s a part of me that craves what they’re offering. A sense of belonging.
“Since when?” I ask. Silas looks down, the harshness in his eyes softening, and like it’s no big deal, like it’s the simplest thing in the world, he says, “Since you told me you don’t like the smell.”
“You’re in control of a monster, Hex. Whatever you need, it’s already yours.” The scary part isn’t that he views himself as a monster. It’s that I believe him.
