The Butterfly Garden (The Collector, #1)

by Dot Hutchison

“Some people stay broken. Some pick up the pieces and put them back together with all the sharp edges showing.”

“Here’s the thing, and it’s terrifying and bewildering and fuck-all unfair, but it’s still the thing: we are here as the unwilling guests of a man who will come to you for company and, as often as not, sex. Sometimes his son will come to you. You belong to them now, and they will do what they want to you, including mark you as theirs. There are quite a few of us here, and we support each other as we can, but the only way you’re getting out of here is to die, so you’re going to have to decide if this life of ours is better or worse than death.”

“My secrets are old friends; I would feel like a poor friend if I abandoned them now.”

Yet if hope has flown away in a night, or in a day, or in none, is it therefore the less gone? All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.

Three butterflies for a broken girl: one for personality, one for possession, and one for pettiness.

was something you couldn’t help but wonder about. When you died, which case would you be in? I was pretty sure I knew which one the Gardener had picked out for me; it was right beside Lyonette, and positioned in such a way that you could see it from the cave. Bliss thought she’d be on my other side, just the three of us, hanging out forever in the fucking wall for future generations of Butterflies to wonder about and fear.