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Kindle Notes & Highlights
It begins with absence and desire. It begins with blood and fear. It begins with a discovery of witches.
Remember, some promises matter more than others.”
All you have to do is be a good listener. Nobody really wants to keep secrets, not even the dead. People leave clues everywhere, and if you pay attention, you can piece them together.”
“‘Normal’ is a bedtime story—a fable—that humans tell themselves to feel better when faced with overwhelming evidence that most of what’s happening around them is not ‘normal’ at all.”
“You are many things, Diana, but a damsel in distress is not one of them.
Somewhere in the center of my soul, a rusty chain began to unwind. It freed itself, link by link, from where it had rested unobserved, waiting for him. My hands, which had been balled up and pressed against his chest, unfurled with it. The chain continued to drop, to an unfathomable depth where there was nothing but darkness and Matthew. At last it snapped to its full length, anchoring me to a vampire. Despite the manuscript, despite the fact that my hands contained enough voltage to run a microwave, and despite the photograph, as long as I was connected to him, I was safe.
“You’re not lost. I found you.”
You are the tree and branch,’” he said, fixing his eyes on the slashes of countryside visible through the nearest window, “‘where delight’s fruit ripens.
Not dying nor living nor healing, there is no pain in my sickness, for I am not kept from her love.’” He leaned down and kissed me on the forehead. “‘I don’t know if I will ever have it, for all the mercy that makes me flourish or decay is in her power. ”
It is a blessing as well as a burden to love so much that you can hurt so badly when love is gone.”
What a complicated, delicate business it was going to be to love him. We were the stuff of fairy tales—vampires, witches, knights in shining armor.
“It was a kiss,” I said, shaken. “It was an oath. And having made this promise to each other, you are outlaws. May the gods help you both.”
Loving Matthew was much more like coming into port than heading out into a storm.
You are my greatest secret.
It’s time to wake up and be a witch. There’s no need for secrets anymore.
He’ll always find you, no matter what. You can trust him. He’s the one we’ve been waiting for.
Matthew wasn’t a killer, or so I told myself over and over again. But he killed to feed himself, and he killed in angry, possessive rages. I knew both of these truths and loved him anyway. What did it say about me, that I could love such a creature so completely?
You have always been a child between, a witch apart. But there is no path forward that does not have him in it. Whichever way you go, you must choose him.
“From birth I have searched for you,” Matthew whispered with a smile, his accent strongly French. “Since finding you I have been able to hold you in my arms, have heard your heart beat against mine. It would have been a terrible thing to die without knowing what it feels like to truly love.”
Dying was nothing at all like I’d expected it to be. There was a moment of bone-deep quiet. A sense of parting and regret. Then nothing.
“You taste of honey,” he murmured. “Honey—and hope.”
