Heartless: The bestselling epic fantasy fairytale retelling

by Marissa Meyer

To be all right implies an impossible phase. We hope for mostly right on the best of our days.’

‘Some say it is better to have eaten and lost than never to have eaten at all.’

‘It is a dangerous thing to unbelieve something only because it frightens you.’

‘Fascinating, isn’t it, how often heroic and foolish turn out to be one and the same.

unwarranted optimism is unwise for one who wishes to eschew disappointment.

The look had been just long enough to fan the flames of her curiosity, and short enough to put none of them out.

There was a moment of suspension around them. She could feel his heart beating near to hers, and his breath in her hair. Something about him seemed crafted for her, and that thought made her face flame, like she was standing too close to a fire.

‘When pleased, I beat like a drum. When sad, I break like glass. Once stolen, I can never be taken back. What am I?’

‘You have my heart, Jest. I don’t know if you deserve it or not. I can’t tell if you’re a hero or a villain, but it doesn’t seem to matter. Either way, my heart is yours.’

The truth belonged to her and she couldn’t escape it and would never forget it.

‘But hoping,’ he said, ‘is how the impossible can be possible after all.’

A beating heart was skewered on its tip. It was broken, cut almost clean in half by a blackened fissure that was filled with dust and ash.