Painted Devils (Little Thieves, #2)

by Margaret Owen

To the wicked girls, The hard truth about shooting for the moon is, when you miss, you don’t always land among the stars. Sometimes all that slows the fall are the thorns. The good news is: The sun won’t see you coming.

I want him to leave out details for me, is the thing. Smudge out my failures until there’s just the girl I want him to see. But one of the many reasons I’ve let him in is because we both know he won’t.

‘A child’s eye fears the painted devil, but an elder wields the brush.’ We fear what we’re taught to fear, not necessarily because it’s worth fearing. I see a devil on the wall. Real or not, the question that matters is who put it there.”

But there is more to justice than an axe; sometimes it calls for leaving no trace but a mending. Sometimes justice must be a needle.”

Years of pain had smelted her down to a knife, and only now was she relearning to touch others without drawing blood.

‘When you want white people to stop arguing with you, make up a proverb.’”

when you say a powerful person has wronged you, it’s always a coin toss whether others will decide it’s easier to pretend they didn’t hear.

sometimes the sun hits your hair when I’m tying your ribbons, and it looks like it’s burning, and I feel like I’m going to catch fire too.

I utterly melt—into his touch for once. Some part of me has always held back, clinging to the fear that I cannot be both known and wanted, that I will always have to surrender to one.

If every star were a reason I care for him—that’s how I feel, like I carry too many stars in me to count, like my skin might burst with the enormity of it all, like if I gather them all up, the only name I could give this is love.

Part of me would martyr myself to sanctify his hands ghosting under my shift, to bathe in the holy fire they leave in their wake. Part of me burns to wreck myself on him utterly.