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“The wishes we make in the dark have consequences,
He has music and madness and magic in his blood,
Dangerous as a winter wind, which freezes the marrow from within, and not like a blade, which slashes the throat from without.
He stood out in sharp relief when everything else was muted, as though we were the only two alive and present in a world of illusion and shadow.
“Beware, Elisabeth. You may prefer the pretty lie to the ugly truth.” “I am not afraid of ugliness.”
I wished for love, the ethereal and the physical, the sacred and the profane, and wondered when I, like my brother, like my sister, would cross that threshold into knowledge from innocence.
First the pages, then my soul. This last scrap of self, he demanded it all. This was the meaning of sacrifice.
“I found my way Underground; I shall find my way back to the world above,” I said. “‘For we walk by faith, not by sight.’”
“Ah, but are we not, in some ways, all trapped in a labyrinth of our own making?”
“So I claim selfishness. Because for once, I want to love myself best, instead of last.”
I wanted to be bigger, brighter, better; I wanted to be capricious, malicious, sly. Until now, I had not known the intoxicating sweetness of attention
It tasted of summer peaches, of sunshine, of life, and it burned all the way down.
Stillness overcame him, the calm in a storm, but I was the rage and wind and the fury.
“I would rather light the flame, knowing it will go out, than sit forever in darkness.”
It is easier to give him my body than to give him my soul.
The sun doesn’t rest, and neither do we,
It was easier not to think of the long road ahead, lest I drown in the mire and muck of my mundane life.
“Now that,” I said, “was a pretty lie.”
You’re just a girl”—he smiled, and the tips of his teeth were sharp—“and I am the wolf in the woods.”
But we do not speak, and the moment is frozen within my heart—this ask and this answer.
“You are,” I say hoarsely, “the monster I claim.”
I am not a saint; I am a sinner. I want to sin again and again and again.
Love is the bridge that spans the world above and below, and keeps the wheel of life turning.”
Time did not stop for anyone, least of all me, but in that moment of our kiss, I found a little pocket of eternity.
the thought of dying was nothing more than the thought of dawn just beneath the horizon.
This was the immortality humans were meant to have: to be remembered by those who loved us long after our bodies had crumbled into dust.
