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“It’s fine.” Alice smiled, worried about his feelings even though he hadn’t worried about hers.
Beg for mercy. It amuses me.’”
Alice scoffed. Her sister was a purist. Rae believed if you were lucky your favourite story got told in a dozen different ways, so you could choose your favourite flavour.
Book characters were dangerously attractive in the safest way. You didn’t even know what they looked like, but you knew you liked it.
literary romantic, falling in love with the potential of every story she met.
Reading a book was like meeting someone for the first time. You don’t know if you will love them or hate them enough to learn every detail, or skim the surface never to know their depths.
In real life, people let you go. That was why people longed for the love from stories, love that felt more real than real love.
The only thing worse than a woman being too innocent was a woman being too guilty.
The story wasn’t real, but love made it matter.
In a story, you were allowed to be wracked by feelings too terrible for reality to hold. If Rae showed how furious she felt, she would lose the few people she had left. She was powerless, but the Emperor shook the stars from the sky. Rae shook with him, in the confines of her narrow hospital bed. He was company for her there.
Normally when fictional characters were good-looking, they turned out to be important. Were side characters allowed to be randomly handsome?
Only special people were saved. The rest had to fight their own way through. At least now Rae had a chance to fight.
If they curse your name, at least they remember it.
Men didn’t enjoy being insulted. Emer knew this, as she insulted them often.
“Is that why you looked at me as you did, when you entered the throne room? You never looked at me like that before.” The delighted expectation Rae had felt, waiting to see her favourite, illuminated her again. Her mouth curved in a returning smile, and the king’s fingers curled warm around hers. “For the first time, I recognized my Emperor.”
Villains were never morning people. They had to stay sharp for midnight plotting.
Her voice had three settings, ‘seductive’, ‘mocking’ and ‘mockingly seductive’. None were appropriate.
Only heroes cared about honour. Villains were allowed to be practical.
Rae was so glad she was a villain. Innocent maidens were useless and Rae’s evil minion was making her proud.
If your suffering was ugly, stories said you deserved it.
Nobody had ever tried to save Rae from poison before. She hadn’t known she wished someone would.
“Cease saying ‘my lady’ in tones of dark sarcasm.” “These are the only tones I’ve got. Want to be called something else?” “‘Boss’,” Rae decided. “How many knives do you have on your person?” “I can’t do complicated mathematics and kill ghouls at the same time.”
She knew how this story went. Moth, meet flame. Compass, meet true north. Cat hair, meet expensive sweater. Some girls were made to be loved.
Somehow Octavian considered Rae stained but not himself, filth only sticking to her,
Villains often had cruel mouths. As mouths went, Key’s was a homicide.
I was blamed more for resenting mistreatment than anybody was blamed for mistreating me.”
I wouldn’t be anything but a story then, but that’s better than being nothing at all. Nobody lives forever, but a story can. Stories are how I survive.
Lia looked sick with fear in a way Rae was familiar with. She looked afraid to hope. Rae understood. Hope was next door to despair.
“That’s offensive. Accept some people make a calm rational decision to choose the path of evil. I have no mental health issues, I’m just wicked and out of control.”
Only now did Rae see stories needed more romantic interludes and fewer assassins.
Characters who quipped during fights were more likely to survive. God, she hoped she lived through this.
“My lady, facial hair is not a motive. This is not a joke,” Emer said savagely.
The truth was, he thought ill enough of himself. He didn’t want the world to agree.
Some people were like that. They didn’t really want you, but they wanted you to want them.
Once upon a time she’d selected the Emperor as her favourite character, but she’d never imagined being one of the many people he discarded on his way to the top.
Everybody wanted Lia because she didn’t want them. They thought it meant she was better than other women, purer and more worthy of having. Except all it meant was she didn’t want them.
What can you do when the story says you don’t matter? I have to matter to myself.”
Marius hesitated. “Care for you.” Eric made an expansive and explosive gesture, ending with a hand clawing through his getaway bun. “Give me a second, hang on a minute. I thought the plot was going somewhere completely different.”
Marius hadn’t known being damned and dishonoured would be such a relief.
“He’s having the most flamboyant and prolonged descent into madness I ever saw. But it says a lot about a man, when the form his madness takes is saving lives.”
If the ending couldn’t be happy, at least it would mean something. She would do something great before she died. She would be an unforgettable part of the story.
“I love you as a knife loves a throat,” he murmured as the dead overwhelmed her. “I crawled out of hell to fall at your feet.”
“The burning city is mine, and I am yours. I changed the story for you. So tell me the lie that you love me.”
