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It would be inadvisable to trust her. Undoubtedly, though, you will.
The burnings were a fine reminder of something Gideon had learned long ago: there is doom to be found everywhere if doom is what you seek.
(If you do not know precisely where impossibility begins and ends, then of course it cannot constrain you.)
Were there worse things than sand? Yes, definitely, but still. Gideon didn’t think it was entirely out of line to find its effects offensive.
Your capacity for power increases exponentially in relation to the actual power you have gained. Thus, to gain power is to be increasingly powerless. If the more power one has, the less one has, then is it the thing or are you?
You will not die,” he concluded. “But, all other outcomes are plausible.”
Being the object of Parisa’s concentration couldn’t be a good thing.
She never spent too long being herself where anyone could see, because it always resulted in her objectification at the behest of another’s greed.
“I promise,” Gideon sighed, “that I won’t get myself hurt, killed, or otherwise maimed.” “No psychological damage either,” Nico warned. “Takes forever to get trauma out of the drapes.”
They looked at each other again, this time less combatively. But with something, Nico thought. Something sad, like a window of opportunity, had come and gone. It had happened before, Nico told himself. It would happen again.
My god they are so in love with each other. Like Nico, my dude, you and Gideon are the literal embodiment of the “they were roommates” meme.
Slap a nose ring and some willful obstinacy on a hot girl with knife proficiency and suddenly the possibility for attraction went up in smoke.)
Mortality, those clever little brackets. Births and deaths, beginnings and ends.
After law and order inevitably came indecency and art.
it had been so long since someone had been noteworthily delusional.
lies are convenient,” he answered for her, “and truths are stupid, and doing anything for any reason is based on a random series of choices built on a self-serving morality that ensures that the species survives.”
“But you picked Tristan. Why?” “Because he’s a masochist. And I’m a sadist.”
the world was essentially a stupid place and they were all basically flawed in the same ways. There were variations here and there, but functionally they were all idiots.
We’re just things, trinkets bouncing around in space, trying to make sense of it?
It was probably still nonsense, but it wasn’t the worst nonsense Callum had ever heard. He’d suffered far worse inside his head.
She sounded certain. Not quite cold, but something metallic. Iron. That’s what it was.
The lunacy of this experiment certainly wasn’t going to get better with lasting brain damage.
“Should we try again?” asked Tristan, which was so like Nico himself he wasn’t sure which one of them to strangle. (Not Tristan, they’d already tried that.)
Tristan’s body loved dying and clearly wanted to do it more than Tristan’s brain thought he should.
That was Nico’s modus operandi, after all. If things weren’t working, make them worse.
the one thing you are not is a liar or a quitter. Even if you are also the dumbest idiot I’ve ever known.
Aviditas. Appetite. Aviditas vitae, the wanting to live.
Ezra was dying. Of boredom. Which was, it turned out, a far slower death than asphyxiation, or smoke inhalation.
In practice, the Forum was a global nonprofit, public-facing in every way that the Society was not and running counter to the Society’s foundational purpose. That, however, was approximately where the distinctions ended (give or take a murder clause).
Already the plan was extending beyond Ezra’s control, the circle of his trusted associates growing wider and more expansive, and therefore less trustworthy.
Ezra had the gauche psychological trappings of a man who’d borne witness to the destruction of everyone he’d ever loved. Until recently, when Ezra had begun taking a more active role in their demise.
A drink to his health. And to it never outlasting her own.
Nico was eminently likable, had always been, and there was nothing more likable than a person who knew exactly when to become scarce.
once again she wanted to strangle him. In a fond way, which was even worse.
Human fragility, he might have said. (Which meant very little from a perpetually intoxicated empath with no friends.)
it was not fun at all to exist without a rival.
Everyone was being extremely unhelpful by being wildly and unpredictably unpredictable.
that sounded very much like a lie. Then again, it was very difficult to tell, as Gideon did not have a strong handle on what it sounded like for her to tell the truth. It happened so rarely he was beginning to confuse it with the sound of something else, like choirs of angels or some divine chime of world peace.
Nico waking him up early, too early, before the sun was even out. He missed Nico’s worst habits, the way Nico had never met a sentence he didn’t want to interrupt. He missed the way it felt to look at Max and Nico and realize that they had left a space in their lives specifically for him, they had given him a place to belong.
He missed his first bike, which had obviously been stolen, and his second bike, which was also stolen. He missed walking with Nico because of his stolen bike. He missed talking to Nico. He missed suffering like this but doing it wholly by choice because of Nico, because Nico was on the other side. He missed Nico. He missed Nico.
It made no sense and it did not need to. There was no science here, only vibes.
Yes, here, this was his domain now, because they were in a dream and Gideon was a dreamer. He was an optimist, an idiot prince. He saw the possibility of doom and said not today, fucker!, flipping off the whims of fate while diving backward into hell.
He was an optimist, an idiot prince. He saw the possibility of doom and said not today, fucker!, flipping off the whims of fate while diving backward into hell.
“Do you miss her?” Parisa asked quietly. They didn’t have to say her name aloud. “Sometimes.” He missed Libby Rhodes the way he would miss having electricity. Or his left hand. He did not know how to function without her. “And you miss him,” Parisa observed. Again, no names. Which meant Parisa probably already knew that Nico missed Gideon like he would miss his conscience, or his ability to slip a punch. He did not know who he was when Gideon was gone.
“Are you really married?” he asked, remembering what Callum had said when he and Parisa had done their little waltz of emotional trauma. “Yes.” She shrugged. “Not in any way that counts.” “Legally?” “Okay, so one way that counts.”