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It was fear, of course, though Minya did not know it. She believed it was rage, only and always rage, but that was the costume it wore, because fear was weakness, and she had vowed to never again be weak.
“There’s the kind of guest who’s honored to be invited, and the kind who believes he’s bestowing honor by accepting.”
The mind is good at hiding things, but there’s something it cannot do: It can’t erase. It can only conceal, and concealed things are not gone. They rot. They fester, they leak poisons. They ache and stink. They hiss like serpents in tall grass.
of all the things she’d conjured in years of yearning for a different life, it had never occurred to her to wish for a man who’d love her enough to come back to her even when she was a biting ghost.
“Just because the power is mine, it doesn’t follow that all the choices are.”
A bold young queen in that distant world was even now training a legion of angels and chimaera to battle the darkness and hopefully destroy it. But that’s another story.
There comes a certain point with a hope or a dream, when you either give it up or give up everything else. And if you choose the dream, if you keep on going, then you can never quit, because it’s all you are.
For that instant, at least, they seemed one and the same, as though all anguish exists in the same deep well, no matter what loss or misfortune leads us to it. We might be at odds, hate each other, and desire each other’s destruction, but in our despair, we are lost in the same darkness, breathing the same air as we choke on our grief.
STEPPED ON BY AN ANGEL IN THE PRIME OF HIS LIFE.
Even under dire circumstances, there is a unique pleasure in introducing the bizarre and inconceivable to others.
Belief like that, that hasn’t tasted any real hope in centuries, but has been fed and nurtured on darker things—loneliness, desperation—it doesn’t simply subside when faced with its own end. It doesn’t accept or adapt. It exists in spite of reason, and will only ever defy it.
But the truth has a way of seeping out. The mind can’t erase. It can only conceal, and concealed things are not gone.
Once upon a time there was a silence that dreamed of becoming a song, and then I found you, and now everything is music.
He said, “I’m sure there are real dragons out there somewhere. You can hatch one from an egg and raise it to be your loyal steed.” Ruza’s whole face lit up. “Do you really think so?” “Out of hundreds of worlds?” said Thyon. “It would be stranger if there weren’t dragons.”
It wasn’t even an alternate version of his life. He hadn’t gone back in time and done everything differently to get to this place. It turned out that sometimes it’s enough to start doing things differently now.
“Wishes don’t just come true. They’re only the target you paint around what you want. You still have to hit the bull’s-eye yourself.”
