Shadowfever (Fever #5)

by Karen Marie Moning

Life is so fragile, exquisite, and short. Why do I keep realizing that too late?

Some people bring out the worst in you, others bring out the best, and then there are those remarkably rare, addictive ones who just bring out the most. Of everything. They make you feel so alive that you’d follow them straight into hell, just to keep getting your fix.

“Most people are good and occasionally do something they know is bad. Some people are bad and struggle every day to keep it under control. Others are corrupt to the core and don’t give a damn, as long as they don’t get caught. But evil is a completely different creature, Mac. Evil is bad that believes it’s good.”

I love books, they’re in my blood.

“Ah, I see. You thought it meant something that I died for you. Did you dress it up in romance? Compose sonnets memorializing my great sacrifice? Did it make you like me better? Did I have to be dead to get you to see me? Wake the fuck up, Ms. Lane. Dying is overrated. Human sentimentality has twisted it into the ultimate act of love. Biggest load of bullshit in the world. Dying for someone isn’t the hard thing. The man that dies escapes. Plain and simple. Game over. End of pain. Alina was the lucky one. Try living for someone. Through it all—good, bad, thick, thin, joy, suffering. That’s the hard thing.”

One thing I’ve learned is that the harder your life gets, the gentler you have to be with yourself when you finally get some downtime, or you can’t be strong when you need to be.

“Some things are sacred. Until you act like they’re not. Then you lose them.”

I’d walk through hell and back, smiling, as long as he was beside me. As long as I could glance over at him and our eyes would meet and we’d share one of those wordless looks.

One day you do meet a man who kisses you and you can’t breathe around it and you realize you don’t need air. Oxygen is trivial. Desire makes life happen. Makes it matter. Makes everything worth it. Desire is life. Hunger to see the next sunrise or sunset, to touch the one you love, to try again.

“You’re Mac,” he says. “And I’m Jericho. And nothing else matters. Never will. You exist in a place that is beyond all rules for me. Do you understand that?” I do. Jericho Barrons just told me he loves me.

“Time does not define the act. Time is impartial; it neither condemns nor absolves. The action contains intent, and intent is where the definition lies.”

The good guys and bad guys aren’t as easy to tell apart as I used to think they were. You can’t look at someone with your eyes and take their measure. You have to look with the heart.