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Sometimes Juliana worried about her propensity towards murder to solve even the slightest of inconveniences,
He spoke of her like the great storytellers spoke of the stars.
Everything about him was smoother and sharper. He moved like water, and his smile was liquid sin.
Juliana had stared at those eyes for years, hating how she had no name for them and how they plagued her late at night. Not dark as the lake. Not bright as the sky. Not blue as cornflowers. Some ancient, ageless blue, stony and smooth, softer and more beautiful than they had any right to be.
Finest food in the kingdom. Excellent cakes. Far better than anything you could get in that hovel of yours, I’m sure.” Juliana paused. “You’re actually tempted by the cakes, aren’t you?” “I… I like food, all right?”
“Do not fear the blade, Prince Prickle. Fear the one who holds it.”
“But I’m hungry.” “It’s survivable as long as you don’t complain to the girl with the dagger that you’re hungry.”
He found himself bitterly unprepared for the agony of want. He was used to sordid fantasies and sick desires, used to craving flesh and sex. This… this was something else. He wanted to pull her into the bath with him, to stroke that flame-gold hair from her back and kiss every bruise and muscle and scar while she lay slotted against his chest. He wanted to dance with her all night long, body against his, breath on his face. He wanted to wake in her arms, for her stiff face to smile at him, for those lips to speak softness in his ears.
Juliana was fine with having friends, friends that could be slotted away neatly in the past, or up on a high shelf, ready to be dusted off whenever she returned to them. Friends like wildflowers who took care of themselves. She did not want people in her life who grew like roots beneath her, twisting into her, making her something else, making it impossible to leave. And she needed to be able to leave.
You could do worse.” “She could quite likely do better.”
“I take great pains to hide my own poor opinion of myself,”
“Yes. I like you.” “How much?” he asked, his smirk wicked. “More than a hole in the head, less than I love that which I love the most, and as much as you deserve.”
“Drink.” “Why?” “Because I asked you to.”
“I’ve always known I would watch you die,” he said. “I’ve liked the idea less and less as the years have gone by. I’d trade many a year to give you an extra month, and still consider I’d got the better end of the deal.”
we have to train twice as hard to be half as good.”
“One day, I would like to find someone who looks at me the way you look at cake.”
Why, her entire life, was it so much easier to hate than love?
