Enigma

by RuNyx

It was not the thorn bending to the honeysuckles, but the honeysuckles embracing the thorn. —Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world. —Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

The chapter quotes are the icing on the cupcake. W/o them, still delicious, with them, Magnificence

Caz van der Waal was an enigma, an unknown variable in her equation, an unsolved mystery, and she had always loved and hated those in equal measure.

he was the collision of control and chaos, blaze and brimstone and barbarism, hellfire and hedonism, a hades of his own underworld, and damn her if a part of her didn’t want to be the girl he brought into it.

“Because I was a man on the path to damnation and I saw salvation instead. Because being near you makes me feel something beyond rage. Because the chaos inside me quietens when I’m near you.” His words were shaking by the end of his sentence, his hands holding her possessively. “You’ve become my muse, little asp.”

When men in the real world struggle to say, "I love you," but Caz is over here like, "hold my beer."

“I want to be the only villain you see. I want to be the only devil who drags you to hell.”

Yes, please.

“Because life with you feels greater than death. Because you make the artist in me burn with the need to create, make the man in me burn with the need to possess, make the killer in me burn with the need to protect. You make me want to live, Salem. You give me a modicum of peace in a world of chaos. Is that reason enough?”

You give me a modicum of peace in a world of chaos.

Death still was inevitable, but life was more beautiful somehow because of it. The moments she had, the moments she lived, the moments she breathed, they were all becoming memories for every other life she touched, rippling through the fabric of time.