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Life was too short to take things seriously, if you asked Rae.
Alice’s rosebud mouth was twisted in judgement. Rosebuds shouldn’t get judgemental.
Being nice was nice. Being nasty got shit done.
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.
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.
Villainous characters had epic highs, epic lows, and epic loves. The Emperor loved like an apocalypse.
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.
Fewer still liked the wicked stepsister. The only thing worse than a woman being too innocent was a woman being too guilty.
Hope without tragedy was hollow. So was tragedy without hope.
The story wasn’t real, but love made it matter.
Is truth stone, or is it water? If enough people walk through a world in their imaginations, a path forms. What’s reality, except something that really affects us? If enough people believe in something, doesn’t it become real?
Finding a favourite character was discovering a soul made of words that spoke to your own.
“Holy shit, Jesus, Batman, don’t kill me!”
He didn’t know the Lady Rahela. So he couldn’t hate her yet. Rae had to bond with him immediately.
He was tall, dark and handsome, which Rae found suspicious. Normally when fictional characters were good-looking, they turned out to be important.
“The other choice is to accept fate, and I won’t. I scheme for power because I refuse to be powerless. I would break this whole world to get what I want. Most people die without mattering at all. If they curse your name, at least they remember it. Don’t you dream of the forbidden? Choose wrong. Choose evil. Let’s do it together.”
“You kill people? Serially?” Rahela blinked. As though banishing reason with the blink, she smiled. “Great. We may need a series of people killed.”
Perishing for love of Lia was one of the major causes of death in Eyam, up there with being eaten by monsters, torn apart by ghouls, and plague.
Rae smiled. “Consider this. A witch who curses you is just telling the future you don’t want to hear.”
An anti-hero was just a villain with good PR. The Emperor might sympathize with Rae. She’d always sympathized with him.
“How long will you keep your oath?” His smile revealed teeth stained crimson. Not the cat who got the cream, but the tiger who got the child. “Until the lady stops paying, or starts boring me. Fun and gold. What else is there to live for?”
“Have you never considered art grants us the impossible? Art opens a door into someone else’s imagination and lets us walk through. Art is the dreamed-of escape. Art lets the dead speak and the living laugh. Art takes you away from pain when no medicine can save you. Art is the first and last word. Art is the final consolation.”
Rae wasn’t a morning person either. Which confirmed it was right Rae had been cast as a villain. Villains were never morning people. They had to stay sharp for midnight plotting.
Prophet, vixen, traitor: this world was forcing her into a bewildering array of roles, but Rae knew how to take care of her friends.
The maid led the way up a flight of stairs, past a large frame empty save for scrawled graffiti reading ‘IMAGINE AN ANCESTRAL PORTRAIT’.
😂😂😂
“I was electrified to hear Key say that when distressed, you call on the names of your lovers,” drawled the Cobra. “Jesus and Batman?” Holy sacrilegious misunderstanding. “I do not have a romantic relationship with those individuals!”
Ha!! 😂😂😂
“I can’t believe you thought you could have a snake theme and be a hero.” That was so naive. At least seventy per cent of villainy was the aesthetic.
Rae hadn’t realized she’d moved back, until she felt Key’s warmth. She glanced around and their gazes caught. He looked startled, as though nobody had ever before considered him a safe harbour.
I love this
“If we’d never met before and you saw me at the Night Market, what would you do?” There was a thoughtful pause. Swaying to the beat, Rae arched her neck and glanced coquettishly over her shoulder. Key was nowhere to be found. Until she looked ahead. Key stood directly before her, one gloved hand on her waist. The other held a blade to her throat. “I’d rob you at knifepoint.” Key touched his forehead lightly against hers. The edge of his smile brushed her cheek, as the edge of the blade kissed her throat. “But I think you’re pretty.”
Villains often had cruel mouths. As mouths went, Key’s was a homicide. “If nothing matters,” murmured the Villain of the Cauldron, “all that matters is making it good.”
“Can I kneel at the altar?” “Sorry, what?” He lifted his head to kiss her mouth, deep and filthy. “May I speak in tongues at nature’s treasury?”
👀👀👀👀
“It’s hard for me to think of the characters around us as real people. Do you understand? Are you like me?” Key’s grey eyes went eagerly bright, silver as a magic blade. “I think so.” Rae grasped his arm. “You walked into the book too?” “Sorry,” said Key. “What book?” His face was blank as a page with no story on it yet. Rae sagged. “Ah. You’re a sociopath. My bad.”
But when people don’t care about you, you have to care about yourself. Ambition is wicked, and I want so much. If I want to live that makes me a monster, if I want a man that makes me the harlot of the tower, if I want a throne that makes me an evil queen. Fine. I’ll be a wonderful monster. I trust my own wickedness. I will never believe in someone else again.
She was sick of being the one less loved. She would rather be a false prophet. She would rather be a villain.
“I mostly use my fan to cover the evil twins.” She made a gesture bosomward. “I call them Cruella and Maleficent.”
Lia squinted. “What have you got there?” “A knife!” Rae beamed. “Oh no,” Lia murmured.
A Knife!!
Noooo!!
“You don’t have to kill if you don’t like it,” Key promised. “I’ll kill them for you.” “Kill who?” Against her hair, she felt his mouth curve. “Everyone.”
Octavian was supposed to save Lia in the nick of time. Instead he was doing the majestic equivalent of turning up late to the meeting with Starbucks.
Ha! Omg! Incredible
“She was nearly killed by royal assassins. Burn down the palace until you smoke out who ordered it, then have their heart and eyes torn out. Give them to her on a plate.” Key sneered. “What’s the point of power, if you never do anything worthwhile?”
Key gazed as though catching sight of his own soul in a mirror. As if he were a starving shark, she the only blood in the world, and all else bitter waters.
Key stretched out on the new bed with his wild black head cradled in her blood-and-moon lap, listening as she told him a story. Usually his expression was either bored, amused or flatly murderous. It was profoundly unsettling to see him happy.
And now the feral goblin was in love.
When Octavian moved towards her, she expected him to smell as heroes did in books: forest and fine leather and another scent that was uniquely him. Only expensive cologne wafted towards her. Heroines must have a better sense of smell than villains.
