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“I need no wings,” she says with a smirk. “I am a witch.”
“Careful. In nature, beauty is a warning. The pretty ones are often poisonous.”
She looked at her life and found it small. Saw the road that lay ahead, and there were no curves, no bends; it ran straight and narrow all the way to its end.
and it drives her mad, the idea that the shape of her body determines the shape her life must take.
“Knowledge is power, María. Never turn it down.
But Sabine has found she far prefers the taste of other women. Just as their skin is softer, she finds their life tastes sweeter, too. More earth than metal. Like burned caramel, perhaps? Hard to say.
And she does not miss much about that life, but the bitter tang of citrus? The sour bite of black cherries? The spiciness of coarse mustard? She misses those,
Death is a kind of freedom, after all.
That is the maddening thing about the hunger: it is always there.
How strange it is, after so many years alone, to find herself with constant company. Strange, but not unwelcome.
“You may be her plaything. But I am her god.”
The air around him tastes like sugar burning,
“Besides, most Venetians can’t pronounce it. But I learned, because I like the way it sounds. Even more, I like how his face changes when he hears it, like a pebble thrown into a pond.”
“Is it life,” he counters, “if there is never death to balance it? Or is its brevity what makes it beautiful?”
“A fine strategy,” Matteo says, “if you’re content to spend your whole life running. But why run when you can put down roots and grow?”
“Control is knowing yourself well enough to know your limits.” His eyes drift toward the stairs. “Better to avoid temptation.”
Never walk alone at night, they tell you, if you’re a girl. And it isn’t fair. Because the night is when the world is quiet. The night is when the air is clear.
To let himself be planted in the midnight soil.
What is the point, she thinks, of loving something you are doomed to lose? Of holding on to someone who cannot hold on to you?
Each and every corpse makes waves, and the waters of Venice soon begin to churn.
voices tangling with shouts and laughter,
the two chasing each other like hands around a clock.
As if love and horror could not go hand in hand.
Reading as much as Charlotte did, she knew there were words, and words between words, ones that hid in the spaces, the pauses, the breaths. They hung on sentences, weighed them down with all the things that were not being said.
Wanting to feel that mix of fear and hope, a hunger for their gaze, their touch, wanting her heart to flutter in their presence.
“Because you are the kind of bloom that thrives in any soil. And who knows, perhaps you will meet a worthy gardener.”
“You have not bored me yet,” says Sabine, refilling her glass. “I doubt you ever will.”
Some people keep their heart tucked so deep, they hardly know it’s there. But you have always worn it like a second skin. It will make your life harder. But it will also make it beautiful.
“Did you find someone brave enough to love you?”
And here is the awful thing about belief. It is a current, like compulsion. Hard to forge when it goes against your will, but easy enough when it carries you the way you want to go.
It is easy, isn’t it, in retrospect? To spot the cracks. To see them spread. But in the moment, there is only the urge to mend each one. To smooth the lines. And keep the surface whole.
But this is the twenties, and things are almost never what they seem.
“We grow together in this garden.”
By now, it’s either very late or very early, Alice doesn’t know the place a night cuts off,
She misses the earthy sweetness of sun-warmed tomatoes, the vivid tang of blackberries, the sugar dusted over biscuits.
“The woman took so little and gave so much. She offered the girl friendship, offered her pleasure, offered her everything she ever wanted. And in the end, all she asked for was her soul.”
didn’t know it then, but it turns out a soul is what makes the sun feel warm against your skin, what gives food taste, what makes you feel full.
The soft skin tears like fruit, the blood sun-warm and honey-sweet.
In hours, they are tangled. In weeks, they are bound. Their days and nights take on a rhythm.
preferring to live in the promise instead of the grim truth.
And Charlotte knows he’s giving her a choice. To tell or not to tell. To share the burden or keep it to herself. But she is so tired of carrying the weight alone. And what is a friend, if not someone willing to share it.
But when you live forever, time is something far less constant.
“you look like you are made of stars.”
It’s early, after all, and the night stretches out ahead of her. A road with no end. (How frightening. How freeing.)
