The Fever King Quotes

“Governments didn't have to listen to the people until the people made it hurt not to listen.”
― Victoria Lee, The Fever King

“What do you believe in, Dara?” Noam pressed again.
Dara sipped at his soda. Swirled his straw round the glass when he lifted his head again. “I believe Vladimir Nabokov is the best novelist of all time.”
“Dara.”
Dara gazed back at him, Noam’s incredulity written all over his face. Without telepathy, Dara couldn’t quite tell if he was actually frustrated or just . . .
But then Noam snorted and said, “Yeah. All right. What else?”
The corners of Dara’s mouth tipped up. “I believe in utilitarianism,” he said. “I believe bourbon is the gentleman’s choice in whiskey. I believe pineapple belongs on pizza. Oh, and the fact that goats eat everything you own just makes them more endearing.”
“You are ridiculous,” Noam said—but he was laughing now, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms over this chest.”
― Victoria Lee, The Fever King

“I want to choose you,” Noam said softly. “Every day, again and again.”
Dara kissed him, Noam’s lips parting under the pressure of Dara’s mouth and his hand lifting to Dara’s cheek. And for that moment Noam let himself believe in the future they’d spun together, all its brightness and its flaws, something so magnificently mundane it almost felt unachievable: late mornings waking up together, Dara perched on the kitchen counter while Noam made dinner, trading work stories over tea in the early evening, Wolf curled up in bed between them while they slept.”
― Victoria Lee, The Fever King

“Outbreaks of magic started all kinds of ways. Maybe a tank coming in from the quarantined zone didn’t get hosed down properly. Maybe, like some people said, the refugees brought it up with them from Atlantia, the virus hiding out in someone’s blood or in a juicy peach pie. But when magic infected the slums of west Durham, in the proud sovereign nation of Carolinia, it didn’t matter how it got there. Everybody still died.”
― Victoria Lee, The Fever King

“For the first time in years, Dara wanted to live.”
― Victoria Lee, The Fever King

“It’s . . . what you said, in the bar the other night. About how I can’t let things go. You’re right. And maybe—I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I’ve been so—my whole life, people do things to, they . . . they hurt the people I love. And there was never anything I could do about it. Not until I got magic.” Noam’s hand slackened against Dara’s, but Dara didn’t try to pull away again. He rubbed his thumb against the backs of Noam’s knuckles, and Noam said: “I can do something, now. And maybe I . . . maybe I’m afraid of being powerless again.”
The moment that followed was heavy and silent, thick enough between them Dara could’ve twisted it in his grasp like fabric.
“You aren’t powerless.” Dara’s voice wavered. “You—Noam, even if you didn’t have magic, you wouldn’t be powerless. You’re so . . . you’re the bravest person I know. The stupidest too.” That earned a broken sort of laugh from Noam. “But. You’re strong. He won’t break you like he—”
His throat closed around the rest.
Noam’s inhale was sharp, audible. He lifted his hand and slid chilly fingers into Dara’s shorn-short hair. “You aren’t broken, Dara.”
― Victoria Lee, The Fever King

“Noam wouldn’t die. He couldn’t.
Dara wouldn’t let him.”
― Victoria Lee, The Fever King

“It was a difficult situation.”
Dara laughed bitterly. “Well. What made it worse, of course, was that I was madly in love with Álvaro from the moment I met him.”
― Victoria Lee, The Fever King

“How short?”
Now or never. And Dara was tired of staying silent.
Dara wet his lips. “When I was fifteen, I started getting drunk early. I’d open my first bottle around three in the afternoon. It meant I was wasted by the time he got home.”
Leo’s gaze caught his in the mirror, his hands frozen with scissors still in grasp. Dara looked back at him.
“Well. Eventually, he got sick of waiting for me to sober up. So one night he grabbed me by the hair”—Dara tugged at that lock twisted round his finger, tugged until it hurt—“and he dragged me into the bathroom, and he held my head under in a sink of cold water until I couldn’t breathe. Until I was choking. He only let go after I stopped fighting, that moment right before I would’ve passed out.” Dara lifted one shoulder, dropped it down. “But I guess it worked. I wasn’t drunk anymore.”
Leo was still staring at him. He didn’t say anything. Dara’s lips curled in a bitter smile.
“Cut it short enough he couldn’t do that again.”
― Victoria Lee, The Fever King

“But Dara missed the version of Noam that wore clothes he got from the thrift store—or, on one memorable occasion, from a dumpster. Dara had fallen in love with the Noam who drifted off surrounded by calculus books and made terrible decisions in the name of what he thought was right, who read Karl Marx and trusted himself more than he trusted anyone else.
The old version of Noam didn’t have this Noam’s eyes—wary, watchful. Dara could never have imagined his version of Noam killing Tom Brennan.”
― Victoria Lee, The Fever King

“Noam held a storm in his hands, and he couldn't feel a thing.”
― Victoria Lee, The Fever King

“Then you’d better come in,” he said, “before people start asking why I have teenage boys visiting my apartment in the middle of the night.”
― Victoria Lee, The Fever King

“You’re the best person I know. Always have been. You just need to learn how to feel something again.”
― Victoria Lee, The Fever King

“No, no, now you listen—you—this whole time. The bruises—it was Lehrer. Not Gordon. Lehrer. He—I was fourteen, Noam! I was . . . but he . . . and I couldn’t tell anyone because, god, didn’t even need his power!” Dara laughed, a mad sound, and he wasn’t touching Noam anymore, had both hands pressed up against his own skull. “No one believed me.”
― Victoria Lee, The Fever King

“Noam knew it was already too late to repair his mistakes. Whatever he and Dara had was broken now. And it was no one’s fault but his own.”
― Victoria Lee, The Fever King

“Besides,” Dara said, “he didn’t see me the way other people did.”
― Victoria Lee, The Fever King

“Noam did kill Brennan. He shot his head open like a rotten fruit. He abandoned Dara to the quarantined zone. He let—his own mother killed herself to get away from him.
And who could blame her?”
― Victoria Lee, The Fever King

“You should get out of range. You don’t want to get caught up in this.”
He was right. But Dara didn’t move.
“I’m staying with you,” Dara said. “Until the end.”
― Victoria Lee, The Fever King

“Then he pushed the covers down and settled on his side, curled in close against Noam—close enough to lend Noam his heat. Dara tipped their brows together and let their noses brush, Dara’s hand a knot against Noam’s chest.
“Be okay,” he pleaded, demanded.
He wished more than anything that he could force Noam to obey.”
― Victoria Lee, The Fever King

“He used to love small spaces, in fact—had filled his room in Lehrer’s apartment with dozens of houseplants with wide frond-like leaves, vines that dangled down from the ceiling like Spanish moss.”
― Victoria Lee, The Fever King

“When Noam was a kid and felt picky about choking down gefilte fish on Pesach, his dad sat him down and told him the story of la pobre viejecita. Once upon a time, there was an old lady with nothing to eat but meat, fruit and sweets... and he'd flop another lump of poached fish on Noam's plate and say, "God bless us with the poverty of that poor old woman.”
― Victoria Lee, The Fever King

“The only thing he remembered from science class was that the cell membrane was a lipid bilayer.”
― Victoria Lee, The Fever King

“Level IV,”
― Victoria Lee, The Fever King

“The boy in this mirror was steel and frost and a bloodied knife. And he wasn’t afraid of anything.”
― Victoria Lee, The Fever King

“None of them spoke to each other after the decision was made, splitting off in separate directions to separate rooms, all coming to terms with the possibility this might be their last night alive.”
― Victoria Lee, The Fever King

“Dara. Please. I—you know I don’t want this, but I have to. We don’t have any other—”
“Choice?” Dara’s mouth twisted in a sardonic knot. “But you do have a choice, Álvaro. You’ve always had a choice. And if you walk away from me right now, you’re choosing him.”
He wasn’t.
Noam would never choose him.
But if he stayed here with Dara . . .
They still didn’t know how to defeat Lehrer. The vaccine was probably worthless. And fevermad or not, Lehrer was still strong enough to kill Noam easy.
If Noam stayed here, he might live another few weeks. But then they’d all die, every one of them. Including anyone else Lehrer had infected or killed in the name of the Carolinian cause.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, but Dara wouldn’t look at him now. Wouldn’t say a word.
Dara pushed past Noam and flung open the door to the bar, retreating back into the warmth. The door slammed shut behind him, and it felt like the last cannon fire at the end of a long battle.
Lethal.”
― Victoria Lee, The Fever King