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“Thiel, if you start listing princes again, I’ll throw ink at you.
But how was forgetting possible? Could she forget her own father? Could she forget that her father had murdered her mother? How could she forget the rape of her own mind?
BACON IMPROVED THINGS dramatically.
But understanding want and understanding mechanics did not go far toward elucidating how you could invite someone else to see you, to touch you in that way.
“What!” Katsa exclaimed. “I can’t believe it. Can you believe it? I can’t believe it!” “We’ve established that Katsa can’t believe it,” said Raffin.
It was nice when something in the world became clear. Especially when it was a nice thing.
“If they’re dangerous, why not let them disappear?” “Because when truths disappear, they leave behind blank spaces, and that is also dangerous.”
“I hear you’re supposed to be good at manipulating people. Try a little harder to make me like you, all right? I’m the queen. Your life will be nicer if I like you.”
Bitterblue loved Katsa and Po with a love as big as the earth. But she knew what it was like to be lost on the edges of their love for each other.
“Holt, who is stealing your sculptures and is of questionable mental health?” “Yes.” “I trusted him five minutes ago. Now I’m at a bit of a loss.”
Yes. Stay with me, stay here until I fall asleep. Tell me I’m safe and my world will make sense. Tell me what to do about how I feel when Saf touches me. Tell me what it means to lose your heart to somebody.
“It is not the job of a child to protect her mother. It’s the mother’s job to protect the child. By allowing your mother to protect you, you gave her a gift. Do you understand me?”
“Just open your eyes wide and look where you’re stabbing,”
I do not consent to die,
“But that’s how memory works,” Bitterblue said quietly. “Things disappear without your permission,
then come back again without your permission.” And sometimes they came back incomplete and warped.
“It’s hard not to hide. I’m so used to it.” “Perhaps it was unfair of me to ask.” “But it’s a relief, Lady Queen,” she whispered, “to let someone see me.”
Every configuration of people is an entirely new universe unto itself.”
“There are no limits to the ways people you think you know can astonish you. I can’t explain the practice to you, Lady Queen. I wonder if it’s meant to be punishment for something one can’t forgive oneself for. Or an external expression, Lady Queen, of an internal pain? Or
perhaps it’s a way to realize that you actually do want to stay alive.”
then wished she’d planned that one more wisely, for he wasn’t a boy. He was a young man with
startling, dark good looks and fine shoulders and a beautiful way with his hands, and she was wearing a bright red robe with too-big pink slippers, her hair a mess and a smear of ink on her nose.
This was how Bitterblue came to discover that sledding, in a nighttime snowfall, with bewildered guards standing above and the earth’s most complete silence, was
magical, and breathless, and conducive to a great deal of laughter.
