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Apparently, I wasn’t anyone worth spying on.
Hope is a dangerous thing to possess.
I was neither dainty nor well-spoken.
No better way to unnerve a foe than a smile.
A death so slow, lips so sweet. One taste, and a thousand deaths you shall receive.
I was going to be the death of myself.
“You tried, even though you knew you’d fail,” he’d said gruffly. “And that’s what matters.”
Occasionally, I’d been known to pick up a book, but I found knives far more entertaining.
“Women don’t fight. We’re docile creatures, don’t you know?”
“You can’t save everyone,” I snapped. “In this world, you have to look out for yourself.” She shook her head weakly. “That’s s-such a sad way of l-looking at things.”
A good man is often the one who has known the most evil.
A man who no longer feared death did not wither beneath its gaze.
The night could speak all it wished. Didn’t mean I was obliged to listen.
And in their own way, the stars soothed me more than any dagger or adrenaline-filled fight ever could.
But if I’m your reflection, you can’t escape me.”
“Well, if you insist on dying, you might as well do it with your friends.”
“Control is an illusion, something to make us feel grounded and in charge of our destinies.”
Regret was the harshest of punishments.
I’d learned that day that sometimes we have to give away pieces of ourselves to others we love, even if it hurts at the time. Without sacrificing those parts, nothing new—and possibly wonderful—could grow in their stead.
Trust in the Stars
“For such a tiny person, you carry an obscene amount of confidence.”
I’d killed and tortured men, had their blood paint my face and hands. I could ignore their desperate begging, turn off my emotions as they screamed for the pain to end. For me to end it. But one spirited girl could send me to my knees.
I wondered what her laughter would sound like if she truly allowed herself to be free. If the weight of this world wasn’t so devastating.
The mind can be the sharpest weapon one possesses, but it can also be the blade that delivers the fatal blow.
Just when I thought this world to be cruel, it went ahead and proved it could get so much worse.
But the truth was, I’d been broken a long time ago. It was the fractured pieces of myself I didn’t trust with others.
I should’ve smiled more, laughed with him more, put aside my stubbornness and gone on every adventure he’d tried to entice me with.
I coveted a love so profound, so realm-shattering, that my home became their arms and the music in my ears belonged to the beating of their hearts.
Life had never been kind; not that I was going to sit there and whine about it, but cruelty had a way of burrowing into your soul and making a home. For people like me, death would be a relief.
All of our jagged pieces might not have fit together perfectly, but what a beautiful, disastrous mosaic we made.
Whatever dreams I might have that evening, they wouldn’t compare to my reality. And that frightened me the most.
“You cannot covet what you do not know.” And now that I’d tasted but a hint of happiness, I feared I would miss it when it was inevitably taken from me.
My goddess of war was so very docile in her sleep.
I wanted to scream, to slice some throats, to do something.
The world, whether ruled by the moon or the sun, had been cruel to me long enough. It was my turn to be cruel.
“Maybe death”—I leaned close, whispering right into the shell of his ear—“will finally satisfy you.”
