The Darkest Part of the Forest

by Holly Black

Anyone who offers up their heart on a silver platter deserves what they get. There was only one way to get over a boy. Only one way that ever worked.

Every child needs a tragedy to become truly interesting.

Faerie morality isn’t human morality. They punish the unmannerly and foolhardy, the braggarts and cheats, not the brave, not tricksters and heroes. Those, they claim for their own.

Back then, it hadn’t seemed weird to Hazel to have the same imaginary boyfriend as her brother. They were in love with him because he was a prince and a faerie and magical and you were supposed to love princes and faeries and magic people.

He was every bit as monstrously beautiful as he’d ever been. You could drown in beauty like that.

If she’d known she was going to die at his hand, she would have dressed up.

lol

He was crushingly, heart-stoppingly beautiful. And he belonged to Hazel. It was Hazel who’d freed the prince, so he was fated to love her. Hazel, whom he’d kissed. Probably his first kiss in a century. Hazel might not love him back right away, but she’d come around in the end. That was how fairy tales worked. Ben was a sap. Ben would have loved him instantly.

aw lil ben is jealous

He realized that Severin was going to hurt him worse than he’d ever been hurt before, because Ben had already set the blade to his chest, had already wrapped this stranger’s hand around the hilt. He loved Severin and he barely knew him.

“I am not trying to dishonor your sister, although it is possible that I am hoping to have sex with her,”

Faeries laughed at funerals and wept at weddings; they didn’t have human feelings for human things.

“I love you like in the storybooks. I love you like in the ballads. I love you like a lightning bolt.

“I need to stop fantasizing about running away to some other life and start figuring out the one I have.”