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Occasionally, there are minutes that get extra seconds. Moments so precious the universe stretches to make additional room for them, and this was one of them. People don’t get pauses like these very often. Some people never receive them at all.
but Legend was as sharp as precise pen strokes and as vibrant as a freshly cut wound.
‘I told you, Tella, I’m not the hero in your story.’
He smelled of magic and heartbreak,
Caraval might have been over, but here Tella was, inside of a dream with Legend, floating over waters of stardust and midnight while fireworks continued to fall from the sky as if the heavens wanted to crown him.
Every night Legend visited her dreams like a villain from a storybook.
Legend was unabashed in the way he looked at her.
There were thirty-two Fates. Eight Fated places, eight Fated objects and sixteen Fated immortals.
She wouldn’t have believed it at all, except this was Legend. Legend brought people back to life. Legend stole kingdoms with lies. Legend wrangled the stars. If anyone could walk through worlds, it was him.
If you wish to destroy all the Fates, you must first slay the Fallen Star.’
If Legend was willing to betray the woman who’d created him, then he was willing to betray anyone.
Legend left the cottage with Esmeralda still slung over his shoulder. And in that moment, Legend no longer felt like Tella’s enemy, or her friend, or the boy she used to love – Legend felt like every story she’d never wanted to believe about him.
Scarlett’s feelings were a commotion of colors, swirling around her in garlands of excited aquamarine, nervous marigold and frustrated gingersnap.
In fact, Tella would probably be furious when she returned and found Paloma unattended. She was always saying how she didn’t want their mother to wake up and be alone. But Scarlett doubted Paloma would wake today. And if Tella was so concerned, she should have come back in time.
‘Hello, Crimson.’
Her dress reacted immediately.
does this dress ever get washed?? it gets a lot of page time
Julian might have started dressing like a gentleman, but he was still behaving like a scoundrel.
Julian lounged back in his seat, spreading out the way young men always seemed to.
‘Do you trust me?’ Scarlett said. ‘With my life. But I’ve met your father and I have a difficult time putting faith in anyone who would make a deal with him.’
Everything smelled of pollen and flowers and budding romance.
Nicolas was a mountain. The large hand holding Scarlett’s could have just as easily crushed it as cradled it. He was almost a full foot taller than her – all muscled legs, burly arms and brown hair so thick that even though it appeared he’d tried to tame it, a wide lock fell over his forehead, giving him a boyish appearance, which was added to by his slightly crooked spectacles.
He looked the way she would have imagined a vigilante who had a secret identity as a gentleman botanist.
‘I don’t need to prove anything,’ said Julian. ‘I’m not trying to win her hand. I’m offering her mine, and everything that comes with it, hoping she’ll take it and decide she wants to keep it.’
‘I’m glad this isn’t just a game to you, Julian, but maybe it should be. Perhaps we should turn this into a courtship competition,’ Scarlett said.
girl no wtf
And she always felt as if she were caving in for Julian.
Sometimes, admittedly, she liked the wildness he brought into her world. But she didn’t like that this time it was more about him getting his way than it was about her.
‘I’ll give a kiss to the winner of each individual challenge, and at the end of the game, I’ll marry whoever wins.’
girl has tipped over into cuckoo-ville
But the smile didn’t change. Nothing changed.
For years she’d divided her life into two periods: When Her Mother Had Been There and After Her Mother Had Left. Now her mother was dead.
lol
book 2: pointless
Red tracks ran down his cheeks, ghosts of tears he’d cried for her.
Legend possessed a fallen angel’s beauty that commanded attention. He was tailored suits over inked tattoos, and lies that people wanted to believe.
The pillows beneath Scarlett were so much fluffier than the lumpy things in her rented apartment. The sheets were far softer as well. They smelled of cool breezes and starlit nights and the only boy she’d ever loved.
She wanted to be sad her mother was dead; that’s how a good daughter would have felt, and if there was one thing Scarlett tried to be, it was good. But she’d stopped trying when it came to her mother.
‘Oh my, you’re her, aren’t you? You’re the one who made Jacks’s heart beat?’
There are whispers you’re his one true love. But that doesn’t mean what you think it does. Immortals cannot love. Love is not one of our emotions.’
‘When we’re attracted to humans, we only feel obsession, fixation, lust, possession. But on very rare occasions, we come across humans who tempt us to love. But it always ends badly. Love is poison to us. Love and immortality cannot coexist. If an immortal feels true love for even a minute, they become human for that minute. If the feeling lasts too long, their mortality becomes permanent. And most immortals would kill the object of their affection rather than become human. It’s not safe to tempt an immortal to love. And if Jacks doesn’t kill you because he’s tempted to love you, then I
...more
The market exacts a time tithe from everyone who steps inside. For every hour you spend in the market, a day will pass in our world.’
In one afternoon Julian and the Reverie Key had shifted Scarlett’s tiny view of the world, making it even larger than she’d realized.
But it was difficult to be afraid of nightmares when Scarlett’s thoughts were still tangled up in the dream that was Julian.
The air tasted candied, the world glittered and the stars looked close enough to steal and place inside of her pockets, making Tella feel as if she were inside of one of Legend’s dreams, or back in Caraval.
‘That sounds like more of a tragedy than a romance,’ Tella said. ‘But it also sounds like Legend. I think he likes stories on the dark-and-tragic side.’
No one knew how to make her dream or wonder or feel as much as Legend. But no one knew how to break her like Legend did, either. She still wasn’t entirely over the last heartbreak, and if he did it again, she feared she’d never get over it.
‘I don’t need to think about it. Sometimes you just know. And I know that I can’t imagine spending an eternity with someone who will never love me.’
There were holes in her slippers by the time she and Julian passed the edge of the city at dawn.
she has got to get some better shoes!
Tella swayed on her feet as she saw the count’s body. Or she thought it was the count’s body. He was in the second-floor library, sitting in a great chair behind his desk, and he looked as if the skin had been burned off his body.
well thats on way to get rid of the unwanted love interest
It shouldn’t have been possible. If the count had been burned alive, then other parts of his library should have caught fire. But it was as if someone had instructed the flames to only burn his skin.
She’d never liked Nicolas, but the fact that he’d clearly been tortured to death made her think that he hadn’t given up her sister – or at least not easily.
10 points for the dead guy
But it was the gilded cage that gave her pause.
naturally
‘You don’t need to fear me, auhtara.’ His grip on her shoulder relaxed a little more as he used that foreign word again. Scarlett was familiar with languages, but it was like nothing she’d ever heard. ‘Why do you keep calling me that?’ His teeth flashed with another attempt at a smile that was everything it wasn’t supposed to be. ‘It’s my native tongue, for “daughter”.’
darth vader reveal
Scarlett couldn’t remember what the Lady Prisoner’s powers were, but she hoped it wasn’t some form of fortune-telling when the young woman’s eyes shifted from purple to white as she said, ‘I look forward to watching you transform into what he wants.’
