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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Chloe Gong
Read between
October 6, 2023 - January 4, 2024
“You’re sleeping,” Rosalind said, folding her arms across her chest, “in your outside clothes?” “I love sleeping in my outside clothes,” Orion shot back. “Makes it easy to run if we get intruders.”
orion's one character flaw is that he sleeps on the bed in his outside clothes ):<
This whole time, he had been speaking English while his father used Shanghainese in reply. It felt easier somehow. To adopt a foreign tongue for difficult matters, to blame that foreignness for the conversation’s friction. The version of him who spoke Shanghainese with his father wouldn’t give him attitude like this.
Thankfully, English was far plainer as a language, so there was less chance of giving away her identity with a simple term.
“That Tolstoy was wrong when he said every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Rosalind let go of her arm. “We’re all the same. Every single one of us. It’s always because something isn’t enough.”
“Anna Karenina is hardly a novel to take a life lesson from.”
The Frenchwoman was smirking because she thought Rosalind was standing there cluelessly, some laughingstock at the mercy of monolingualism.
“I choose to interpret domestic tasks in my own unique way.”
“I’ve brought you extra muffins. Pay attention to me, please.”
“What is family for if not to love us and then break our hearts?”
“Your life is mine as mine is yours,” she said, very seriously. “We are bound in duty if not in matrimony. I won’t make the same mistake twice.” Orion’s smile had turned into a wide grin. She didn’t know what was so amusing about all this—did he like the idea of their mutual death? She had always known he was a little off the rails.
“You don’t start all your dates throwing off a tail?” “I’m divorcing you immediately if that’s your idea of fun.”
“Maybe we can fold it?” “It’s wood, Orion. How do you fold wood?” Orion made a noise that sounded like a whistling teakettle. “Can we break it into pieces?” Rosalind gave him an incredulous look. “IT’S WOOD!”
this had no business being funny, i was dying
“You are a daunting force, beloved. If you fade away because of some measly poison, I will not forgive you in the afterlife.”
“Orion, qīn’ài de, please shut up,”
i love them so much
“This is not a game to me,” Orion cut in. “I would rather die by your hand than have you believe me a traitor. I would rather take a fast bullet than have us pitted on different sides of an agonizing battle.”
no one tell him about the plot of romeo and juliette ):
“Did you mishear?” “How do you mishear murder and conspiracy?”
For the next minute, they settled into a tentative silence, not because there was nothing else to say but because too much had been said and there needed a moment of pause.
“Isn’t it strange how we say sorry in Chinese? In every other language it’s some version of “pardon” or distress. But ‘duì bù qǐ…’ We’re saying we don’t match up. Sorry I didn’t do what was expected. Sorry I let you down. Sorry you expected me to save you from harm, and I didn’t—I didn’t.”
In every book I write, the most important thing I want a reader to know is that history is not a set of facts and dates, but a narrative that gets drawn up in between.
an author's note highlight because this is what i love about historical fantasy
