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My gods, the woman was like the sun. He needed tinted glasses just to look at her.
“I helped you in my own way. I became The Villain of the tale—and isn’t that what you really needed?”
How she’d yell at him, and then the flush would go all the way down her chest, dipping below her bodice, at which time, naturally, he’d be distracted by it and stop listening. She’d notice and yell at him some more. He couldn’t wait.
And perhaps, most importantly—he wished to have a godsforsaken tea party with her little sister, Lyssa.
Why do men take pain as well as ice takes heat?
She was afraid, but she knew now: fear usually meant you were standing on the edge of something new, something self-altering, something potentially good. Fear was not something she would shy away from ever again.
They’d been there all along, hidden behind the misplaced idea that women did not need to be watched so closely, that they couldn’t be any sort of true risk.
“I would never make the mistake of underestimating a woman like you. It would be a fatal one.”
“It is fiction for a reason, you menace. By the gods, what if you carried out every impossible act you read about?” It was a rhetorical question, but she couldn’t resist the urge to slip into the normal ease of their cadence, like no time had passed. “Oh, I suppose that I would need to become very, um—flexible.”
This woman could convince someone to defy the hands of time if it suited her.
He would follow her off a cliff without question. And Evie knew she was in love with him. Right then, right there.
She breathed, “It’s so beautiful.” Her boss had been silent beside her, but now he replied hoarsely, still gripping her hand, “Yes, it is.” And when she turned, he was looking at her.
Kingsley held up a sign. Mean. Trystan nodded at the frog. “Thank you. I needed that.”
“The person who saves the magical lands will take Fate’s youngling well in hand; when Fate and starlight magic fall together, the land will belong to you forever. But beware the unmasked Villain and their malevolent dark, for nothing is more dangerous than a blackened good heart…”
“There is nothing written in any text, gods-created or not, that says we cannot be more than one thing. You’ve been told for a very long time that you are made for destruction, but there is nothing that says you cannot be more. You can be capable of bad and do good. You can do good things and still be bad. Nothing is set in stone, and if it helps, I’ll stand by you no matter who you choose to be.”
There was no emotion in his voice when he said, “Does your mind live in the gutter?” She shook her head, tapping a finger against her lips. “No, but it rents there on occasion.”
“I do not smile when I don’t feel like it.” Lyssa blinked, surprised. “Why not?” “Because we are always expected to plaster a grin on our faces even when we don’t wish to. I used to do it so often, I stopped being able to tell when I was smiling for me or for someone else. So now, I don’t smile unless I’m one hundred percent sure it’s something I want to do, not something someone else wants me to do.”
“I don’t like him.” Sage waved her hand and patted its finger. “That’s all right.” She stage-whispered behind her hand, “Lots of people don’t.”
“You know as well as I, Trystan Maverine, that humans demonize what they cannot understand. It isn’t our job to educate them, just to live the way we’re meant to with the knowledge that being called a monster does not make you one.”
“Sometimes family isn’t a thing we are born into but a choice we make. Sometimes”—Evie smiled—“the people who love you most in your life are the ones who choose you.”
Losing someone didn’t mean the end; it merely meant the beginning of the life you’d lead without them, the beginning of letting in the people you’d gain in their stead.
When someone revealed themselves to be something worse than what you thought, you were then tasked with sorting through what good parts within them were real, if any.
It had occurred to her many times over that “impossible” was merely a word people used to describe limitations they wished for you to adhere to, so you wouldn’t upset the balance.
emotional scars sometimes demanded to be reopened—to let out the remainder of the pain, to free you from it.
“I do not lack equilibrium,” she argued. “The ground merely lacks the courtesy of letting me know when it is coming closer.”
it wasn’t thoughtless bravery that won the fiercest battles—it was welcoming the fear that lived inside your heart, in your mind, and harnessing it to carry your feet forward, knowing it couldn’t control you.
she had one powerful and far more ridiculous tool in her arsenal. Spite.
“I would sooner take the scraps she lay at my feet,” he stated, “than commit myself to a cheap imitation.”
“I’ve suffered more at the hands of those who claim to be good than those who are deemed to be evil.”
“I’m evil,” he told destiny. “I’ve killed countless people, tortured a dozen more for information, and tormented and struck fear into the hearts of nearly every person in Rennedawn—and likely the whole of the continent, too. I shouldn’t pass any test of goodness.” Evie interrupted him by clapping a hand over his mouth. “He’s like a teddy bear that got hold of a kitchen knife.”
He used to be able to keep track of the few people he cared about with one hand; at this rate, he’d have to expand to…two? Odious.
“Think of me…when you’re with the trees.”
Beware the wrath of a kind heart.
