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My family tree has a lot of thorns, and a tendency to draw blood.
Sometimes I hate my biological family. Maybe that’s why I’ve worked so hard to build myself a new one.
I’d never considered myself a person worth losing a throne for, but Tybalt thought I was, and I’ve learned not to argue with him about that sort of thing. Instead, I was doing my best to live up to what he saw when he looked at me. That seemed better for both of us. Healthier.
You can’t bandage someone else’s wounds while you’re bleeding to death from your own. It never works out the way you want it to.
Life is never simple. I’d say “when Faerie is involved,” but I don’t think I need to. Life is never simple, period. All we can do is hang on and hope for the best.
Sadly, knowing where trauma comes from doesn’t magically heal it. Only time and effort can do that.
I liked who I’d grown into being a whole lot better. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t feel sorry for the way the other me had ended.
I’ll never be a mother again. I’ll be a grandmother, and a great-grandmother, and so on, for a dozen generations, but I’ll never look someone in the eyes and know that the ocean they carry inside of them remembers the ocean I carry inside of me.
“A few scattered survivors does not a people make. It’s just a funeral in slow-motion.”
“Does anyone ever really know anyone else, or do we act like cartographers, drawing maps of unfamiliar shores, pretending it teaches us their secrets? You’ve met me, Mate Rodrick of the Duchy of Ships, master of the Jackdaw, wind-chaser and wave-chaser and son of the sea. You’ve seen my shores from a distance, through a fog. But to claim to know me? That’s the purview of greater hearts than yours, and it’s not a burden you’ve ever been called upon to bear.
mother wasn’t a megalomaniacal bitch who thinks of her kids as useful pieces in a century-spanning game of chess, but that didn’t make her a great communicator, and sometimes she’d make children out of random stuff when Dad was away. When Pete showed up, she was just this skinny kid with kelp in her hair and fish guts in her teeth, and we all assumed Mom had fallen in love with the story of a shipwreck or something. It wouldn’t have been the first time.
“It’s terrible to be the one who has to set things right when you didn’t play any part in breaking them.”
“Foolishness and bravery look a lot alike if you’re not paying close enough attention,”
“There’s no one in this world you can trust all the time. Not even the people you love, not even the people who love you.”
“I’m the motherfucking sea witch. I don’t have to answer your question.” The child’s eyes widened. “You said a swear.” “Again, sea witch. I’m allowed.” The child nodded, apparently satisfied, before turning and wandering off down the beach.
There was a piece I didn’t have yet. I’ve learned, to my regret, that missing pieces now almost always mean pain later.
“All of you were content to lead when you thought there’d be no costs, as there had been no costs for hundreds of years. You took up the mantle of your families knowing this day might fall within your lifetimes, and when it did, you regretted it.
“That was impressively vicious of you. Had I not fallen in love with your ladylike charms long since, I think I might fall in love now, out of sheerest self-defense.”
“What you mean and what you say should be similar, or you risk people not understanding you.”
We had to be in this together, even when it was hard, or we weren’t really together at all.
He kissed me hard and fierce and unrelenting, and I kissed him back the same way, both of us fully aware that this could be the last kiss we ever had the chance to share. But then, we always knew that. Our lives weren’t exactly safe, and one day, one of us wasn’t going to come home.
“Heroes raising heroes to do heroic bullshit since the dawn of time,”
Justice hasn’t been done, but sometimes justice is an impossible ideal.
It wasn’t a very princely thing to do. In my defense, I wanted to. Doing something simply because I want to do it is an extremely princely thing to do.
Dean is surprisingly fond of romantic comedies, artifice-filled narratives where boy meets girl—always boy meets girl, which is remarkably limiting and pedestrian for a genre supposedly built on the shoulders of love—through
