Lucy

“I wish I had fought.” Effy surprised herself by saying it. The words had leaped out of her throat, unbidden. “I know I beat him in the end, but for so many years all I could do was run and hide. I just sat there and let the water pour in around me. I didn’t know that I could fight back. I didn’t know how to do anything but wait to drown.”
“Oh no, Effy. That’s not what I meant at all. You don’t have to take up a sword. Survival is bravery, too.”
― Ava Reid, A Study in Drowning

“Effy found herself half in love with the Fairy King sometimes, too. The tender belly of his cruelty made her heart flutter. There was an intimacy to all violence, she supposed. The better you knew someone, the more terribly you could hurt them.”
― Ava Reid, A Study in Drowning

“I was a woman when it was convenient to blame me, and a girl when they wanted to use me.”
― Ava Reid, A Study in Drowning

“That was the cruelest irony: the more you did to save yourself, the less you became a person worth saving.”
― Ava Reid, A Study in Drowning