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“Our loved ones hang in the balance. If it can’t be trust, let vengeance bind us.”
Poison can taste like candy when you’re starving.
Without burning anger, all you’re left with is the embers of grief. In many ways, fury is better because at least it’s something to cling to. Sadness is a barren expanse.
“I think we’ve all done things we aren’t proud of,” I say. “I think a person is more than the strikes against them. At least I’d like to believe we are.
“Because no person should be immortal. Even you. Especially not you.
Innocence is a cheap flower to be plucked and torn apart by powerful men.
“There’s an old expression in my village that sometimes the tongue isn’t ready to speak what the eyes have seen.
“You aren’t your bloodline,”
“True love doesn’t end just because of death.”
There are scars we display, and then there are the ones we don’t want anyone to see. Aeri trusted me with the darkest parts of her story, the deep, ugly wounds, and I think she’s more beautiful for surviving them. The darkness makes me appreciate her light.
People have a peculiar way of believing the worst about powerful women.
As I told Aeri, monsters can wear such charming masks.
The sound is haunting. I didn’t know these animals could mourn.
😭
It’s not normal, this love, but it’s ours. I could never love anyone else like this. I could never love anyone else at all.
As long as she’s breathing, I can’t stop. I won’t. Another wave of shame snakes around me for wanting to give up. But shame is only what you feel when you can be better.
I suppose time makes a fool’s game of all men’s efforts.
But if I abandon what I love just to live, what kind of life is that?”
I like this little thief—no point in denying it. But if she lies to me again, I may kill her myself.
I’m certain he’s lying to me again.
She is ashes.
The only thing to do is to move forward. That’s the only thing to ever do.
“I’ll always find you.”
My mother used to tell me to just focus on the next step when the whole problem was too daunting.
People have to die for Daysum to live. It’s a simple exchange.
😭
But just because you love someone, especially as a child, doesn’t mean they’re perfect or even good.
“We don’t deserve love any more than we deserve air. It’s just something we need.”
“Neither Euyn nor I possess Baejkin blood,”
Queen Quilimar has hardened herself to feeling anything, as many women do to endure this world.
Joon or Omin was my real father.
