Dreams of Gods and Monsters (Daughter of Smoke and Bone, #3)

by Laini Taylor

“People with destinies,” it said, “shouldn’t make plans.”

There is the past, and there is the future. The present is never more than the single second dividing one from the other.

“Life,” he told his brothers and sisters now. “I want the future to be life.

Please don’t forget I’m not a monster. Please don’t forget what I gave up. Please don’t forget me.

The despair was entire, complete as a possession, but fleeting. It released her, and was gone, but it left Karou gutted, guttered, feeling for all the world like . . . . . . a candle flame extinguished by a scream. And in the aftermath of its enormity she might have been nothing more than the curl of smoke left to drift and disperse at the end of all things—at the evanescence of the world itself.

“We will fight for our world to the last echo of our souls”—and

How could you tell if your instincts were just hope in disguise, and if your hope was really desperation parading as possibility?

If he doesn’t look back this time, I’ve lost him. And the possibility brought on an echo of the earlier despair. A candle flame extinguished by a scream. She lifted her eyes and looked across the cavern. And . . . . . . living fire. That was what his eyes were like, greeting hers: a fuse that seared the air between them. He was looking at her. And as far away as he was, and with so much between them—chimaera, seraphim, all the living, all the dead—it felt like touch, that look. Like the rays of the sun. They looked at each other. They looked, and anyone might notice. Anyone might see. Angel-lover. Beast-lover. Let them see.

Having hope was like dangling himself over a chasm and putting the rope in her hands. She could annihilate him if she wanted to.

How do you just thrust “I love you” out into the air? It needs waiting arms to catch it.

“It’s all I want, to be beside you, helping you. If it takes forever, all the better, if it’s forever with you.”

“As long as you want me with you.” “I want me with you,” she said at once.