In the Veins of the Drowning Quotes

“You are . . . You're one ambush after the next and I have yet to get my bearings.”
― Kalie Cassidy, In the Veins of the Drowning

“He spoke over my lips. “What I feel for you is beyond reason—beyond duty and desire. You have tipped my whole world on its side, and you are the one clear thing in the chaos.” His nose brushed the end of mine. “You. I want you.”
― Kalie Cassidy, In the Veins of the Drowning

“You have shone a light on me. You made me feel fury and terror and joy and longing. How do I curl myself back into the darkness after being so alive?”
― Kalie Cassidy, In the Veins of the Drowning

“I called you a gnat, and I detest myself for it. I am the bug. A moth. And you are the moon. Drawing me, pulling me. But I’ll never be able to reach you without destroying myself. All I can do is pray for the day.” He gave me a pleading look. “Do you understand? I am doing my very best to keep a grip on myself, to keep my distance, but everything you do seems in service of thwarting that goal.”
― Kalie Cassidy, In the Veins of the Drowning

“For awful things filled empty spaces. And it was in the darkest, deepest part of the sea that monsters were made.”
― Kalie Cassidy, In the Veins of the Drowning

“Emotion etched his face. "You fill my every sense. You stalk my waking mind. You make up the entirety of my dreams.”
― Kalie Cassidy, In the Veins of the Drowning

“All my life I’d thought being docile and obedient would give me a sort of strength, safety. But I’d made myself fragile instead.”
― Kalie Cassidy, In the Veins of the Drowning

“I yearned for power too. I yearned for the freedom and choice and protection it could offer.”
― Kalie Cassidy, In the Veins of the Drowning

“What I feel for you is beyond reason—beyond duty and desire. You have tipped my whole world on its side, and you are the one clear thing in the chaos.” His nose brushed the end of mine. “You. I want you.”
― Kalie Cassidy, In the Veins of the Drowning

“Lay a hand on my wife and you’ll lose it.” Theodore gripped the hilt of the dagger.”
― Kalie Cassidy, In the Veins of the Drowning

“I see what’s between you two. It’s barbed and messy, but there’s something there.”
― Kalie Cassidy, In the Veins of the Drowning

“You are lovely. You’re charming, and if our circumstances were different, I’d likely enjoy a meal with you, bask in your wit, but as it is your beauty and charm are like gnats that I must swat away from my eyes to keep my vision clear. Your qualities are wasted on me. They do not matter, because your purpose and power exceed them.”
― Kalie Cassidy, In the Veins of the Drowning

“Right before it reached her - right before I woke - I realized: I was the women. I was the water. I was the monster.”
― Kalie Cassidy, In the Veins of the Drowning

“Someday,” she whispered, as her fingers played through my damp hair, “you will have a full life. A home, if you want one. And you’ll see more than these stones and mountains and sky. And I’ll be with you when you first touch the sea. You’ll feel sand between your toes, and salt water on your tongue, and you will feel more joy than you can fathom. I promise.”
― Kalie Cassidy, In the Veins of the Drowning

“There were women—I’d seen them—who were lit from within, and when they became wives that light dampened. I did not know if it was their husbands that doused their flame, or if they themselves curled up around it, their very souls trying to protect it from extinguishing. Regardless, I had been prepared to watch myself dim. But Evander’s touch lit sparks inside me, and somehow, he coaxed the light within to burn brighter, to burn steadily.”
― Kalie Cassidy, In the Veins of the Drowning

“Do you think we are fated to be as we always have been? You, blighted by fear, and me, devoutly, miserably dutiful. We were both fading away." He crossed the space between us. "You have shone a light on me. You made me feel fury and terror and joy and longing. How do I curl myself back into the darkness after being so alive?”
― Kalie Cassidy, In the Veins of the Drowning

“You might have to fight for him. You might have to let him go. But whatever will be required of you cannot be accomplished while you’re naked.”
― Kalie Cassidy, In the Veins of the Drowning

“The absence of you has shown me that, if you will let me, I will happily carve myself open again and pour you back inside me.”
― Kalie Cassidy, In the Veins of the Drowning

“The outside world was coming for us with a chisel and hammer, ready to knock us apart, to crack us to dusty pieces”
― Kalie Cassidy, In the Veins of the Drowning

“It was desire - attraction - but nothing more. Nothing sturdy could grow under such conditions, and on the odd chance that something had sprouted, bolstered by our blood bond, we were two days away from ripping it out at the root.”
― Kalie Cassidy, In the Veins of the Drowning

“I thought of our escape, when he'd held me to calm my shaking body and how the bond in my belly had glowed. I remembered the outline of him, the feel of his heart beating against my spine. The memories alone filled me with frisson.
There were many misguided things I desired, and I suspected it would always be so. Just as sure as I was made of flesh and blood and bone and sea, I was also made of want. Excising it, draining it like a bad humor, would never do, but this one time, with this one man, I could stop myself from being the fool.”
― Kalie Cassidy, In the Veins of the Drowning

“I'm fine," I said, though my body quaked. It was foolish - I knew it was - to not accept his help.
"Clearly." His hands were propped on narrow hips. "But this incessant blood bond will not let me ignore the fact that you're shaking. You're cold. You're scared -"
"Don't you dare call me a coward again -"
He held up a hand. "I said you were scared." In the moonlight, I could see just the sincerity that softened his eyes. "I'm scared too."
My fingers flexed against the vase I held, but I said nothing. I couldn't decide if knowing that he, the descendant of a Great God and king, was also scared made me feel better or worse.”
― Kalie Cassidy, In the Veins of the Drowning

“I have no desire to be like you -" I jabbed a finger against his chest. "To scrape myself empty for others and call it noble.”
― Kalie Cassidy, In the Veins of the Drowning

“Is it so hard for you to imagine?" he asked, as he set the folder within a polished wooden box and locked it with a silver key. "To fulfill one's duty and be satisfied by it? I don't need a charming or beautiful wife. I don't need her to be a friend. None of that will benefit my kingdom."
"And you are you kingdom? There's nothing you need that it doesn't?"
He perched on the edge of his desk and crossed his arms. He beheld me with one of those frustratingly unreadable looks of his. "Like what, my lady?"
"Like..." Like passion or humor or friendship, but I couldn't bring myself to speak it.”
― Kalie Cassidy, In the Veins of the Drowning

“It matters to me," he said. "I won't have the disloyalty of stealing another king's subject in the night as a nick on my crown.”
― Kalie Cassidy, In the Veins of the Drowning

“I did not want to step from one ruler's fetter into the next. The responsibility of honoring, and kowtowing to, and obeying another man who would not do the same for me in turn. And yet it was the way of things.”
― Kalie Cassidy, In the Veins of the Drowning

“A braid of shame and pride twined through me like a second spine at what I'd done to Evander. As I descended the stairs and passed Nemea's throne room, I thought of the inscription upon its wall. The monster is always slain. I thought of Evander's blank, blue-lipped face, and a pang of uncertainty struck me. Perhaps I was just as monstrous as he had been. Perhaps my own slaying was yet to come.”
― Kalie Cassidy, In the Veins of the Drowning

“The line we toed began to break and blur.”
― Kalie Cassidy, In the Veins of the Drowning

“Bedroll. As in one. As in there is no way in all the sweet hells that this blood bond would let you sleep away from me when we are in the middle of the wildlands with three strange men sleeping beside us.”
― Kalie Cassidy, In the Veins of the Drowning

“I called you a gnat, and I detest myself for it. I am the bug. A moth. And you are the moon. Drawing me, pulling me. But I’ll never be able to reach you without destroying myself. All I can do is pray for the day.”
― Kalie Cassidy, In the Veins of the Drowning