A Dark Forgetting Quotes

“Both were ballads about a woman "marked by the moon." In them, the Song Mage praised his muse, describing her midnight hair, her rosebud mouth, her rocky spine. They were odes to her unparalleled beauty.
"He's a little obsessed," said Emeline when she finished singing. "Even her teeth enchant him." She browsed through the next ballad---also about his moon-marked woman. "And she must have had some pretty sexy ankles, because there's an entire verse devoted to them in the next song...."
The corner of Hawthorne's mouth turned up. "Maybe ankles were his weakness."
Emeline glanced up at the boy cooking her dinner. He was like the forest, she thought. Quiet and steadfast in the way he held himself, with secrets hidden beneath.
What's your weakness? she wondered.”
― Kristen Ciccarelli, Edgewood

“"Listen," he said, reaching for her wrist distractedly, eyes on the page of the book as he pulled her closer. Holding the Dark, the title read. By a poet named Melanie Cameron. Emeline leaned back against the shelves, watching him.
" 'I didn't know it would go like this,' " he recited. " 'I didn't know I would find you in the dark...' "
Emeline stared at his mouth, captivated by the cadence of his voice. His expression was hungry as he read on, as if he'd discovered some delicious secret and wanted to feed it to her. Like a ripe red strawberry dipped in chocolate.
"When I lie against you with my eyes closed,
I bring your body with me,
into the darkness,
I bring your whole body inside me.
And in that darkness I know you
so much better than hands and mouth can know,
I know you,
as though you were the darkness inside me."
He glanced up from the page, fixing her in place with that same hungry gaze. Warmth pooled in her belly.
"It's nice," she murmured.
He raised an eyebrow. "Nice?" The corner of his mouth turned up as he lifted his hand, bracing it against the shelf beside her.
She wrinkled her nose at him. "Pretty, then."
"How about tender. And..." His eyes dropped to her mouth. "Intimate."
There was the oddest feeling in Emeline's chest. Like a million tiny stars on the cusp of bursting. Sparks crackled in the air between them.”
― Kristen Ciccarelli, Edgewood

“Suddenly, it wasn't just Emeline's song flooding out, but something else. A thick and shimmering power gushed out of her, like blood from a wound. Around her, the clearing changed. Pale, dead leaves cascaded to the forest floor like snow. The trunks of the trees changed from powdery white to deep browns and dappled greens, color spreading like a blush from their roots to their branches. New leaves began to bud and unfurl, teeming with life.”
― Kristen Ciccarelli, Edgewood

“I want him.
Not the way she wanted the others. She didn't want him to use---as a shield between her and the things she was running from. To feel normal. To soothe that lonely ache.
She wanted him. His sharp edges and surprising tenderness and quiet strength. She wanted him spooning homemade soup into her mouth in his cozy, tidy house that smelled like bread. She wanted him discussing poetry in the dark with her grandfather. She wanted that fervent, desperate kiss in the palace hall.
She wanted Hawthorne Fell. The Wood King's henchman. Not exactly boyfriend material, but still. He called to her the way the forest did. Called to something deep and forgotten. Something that longed to come alive again.”
― Kristen Ciccarelli, Edgewood

“A tiny orb rested in the center of the pale green pillowcase. She picked it up.
The orb was smaller than a marble, but bigger than a pearl, and it was unnaturally cold to the touch. Opal-like colors swirled beneath the surface: pale blues and greens and creamy whites.
Emeline stared for several seconds, unable to catch her breath. Knowing what this was despite every part of her that screamed it wasn't true.
The mark of a tithe paid.”
― Kristen Ciccarelli, Edgewood

“The woods came for Emeline the way they always did: creeping in with the shadows, seeping up through the cracks.
Emeline, they whispered. Sing us a true song.
Emeline gritted her teeth, ignoring it. From her perch on the wooden stool beneath the white lights, she continued to croon into the mic, picking the strings of her ukulele, telling herself she didn't care if the ale in the bar taps turned to mucky creek water tonight, or if the cash in the register transformed into crisp golden maple keys. She didn't care if those spongy green clumps currently sprouting up between the floorboards were, in fact, forest moss.”
― Kristen Ciccarelli, Edgewood

“Emeline...?"
Her mother's voice was no longer a rasp, but a soft, quivering thing.
Emeline spun to find the Vile behind her, glimmering like a mirage. The air shone, delicate as a cobweb, then changed.
Like a butterfly abandoning its chrysalis, the Vile before her fell away, until a monster stood before Emeline no longer. In the monster's place was a middle-aged woman, beautiful as the moon. Her raven-dark hair fell in waves around her shoulders, her eyes were the bright blue of robins' eggs, and down her body spilled a silk dress the color of storm clouds.
Emeline let out a shaky breath.
"Mama?"
Rose Lark dropped the knife and the sharpening stone. They hit the soft earth with a thud. The roots of the cavern immediately grew over them, pulling both blade and stone deep into the earth where they couldn't be retrieved.
Staring at her daughter, Rose took a hesitant step before lifting shaky fingers to Emeline's face.
"I'm so sorry," she whispered as tears trembled down her pale cheeks.
Emeline shook her head furiously, reaching for her. "It wasn't your fault." She wrapped her arms around her mother's frail shoulders, pulling her close. Her hair smelled sweet, like rosewater. Her thin body shook like a sapling in a gale.
Weeping, Rose held her daughter tightly, as if, this time, she didn't intend to let go.”
― Kristen Ciccarelli, Edgewood

“I'm here to give a tithe," she told the Heartwood. "I give you my voice---and with it, my dreams beyond the woods. I'll be your new Song Mage, if you'll have me."
Breathing in sharply, Emeline thought of the cost. She would never again sing her songs beneath the lights. Never walk out on a new stage or record an album she was proud of. She would never get the chance to prove she could make it on her terms.
Emeline breathed out, letting it go.
It hurt when the woods took her offering. Like hands reaching in and plucking out her soul, severing her from her oldest dream.
But when she breathed, something new flooded in.
It felt like the night she sang to the elm tree cage, asking the trees to set Hawthorne free. She'd felt the power in her voice flow out of her that night. This time, though, it was the reverse. Power was flowing in. Infusing her marrow and blood. Folding itself into her skin.
It was like Grace said: there was magic in sacrifice. Emeline had tithed the most precious thing she owned, and something equally precious was filling in the gaps.
It coursed through her---thick as honey, bright as starlight. Pushing like a blazing-hot sun. Humming like a swarm of contented bees.
Power.
It tasted like sugared sunshine on her tongue.”
― Kristen Ciccarelli, Edgewood

“The songs transported her backwards in time, to when she first wrote them. As each one melted into the next, as her voice sang lyrics and melodies from her past, memories burst like colors across a blank canvas.
Because inside each and every one of these songs---songs she'd written before she ever left Edgewood---memories were hidden.
Emeline choked on them. Hot tears burned in her eyes as she tapped the next file, and the next, racing through songs and, with them, memories that had been stolen from her. Images of a younger Sable flashed before her eyes, interwoven with a younger Rooke. And someone else.
Hawthorne.
He was everywhere, with his dark hair and strange eyes. Her songs were so full of him, Emeline felt like she was drowning in him. Hawthorne, sitting next to the fire, reading a book. Hawthorne, shucking off his shirt and diving into a moonlit pond. Hawthorne, climbing in through her bedroom window. Kissing her in the dark.
She'd embedded him inside her music.
Because songs were never just songs for Emeline. They were capsules, each one containing a moment trapped inside it.
As the next one started to play through her headphones, an image of a tree rose up in her mind. Emeline could see its thirsty roots; the twisting, twirling gray-brown bark; the gnarly branches stretching towards the sky. A silent sentinel, standing guard at the edge of the woods.
Her tree.”
― Kristen Ciccarelli, Edgewood

“We spoke of you. According to Joel, you make him very happy."
She bristled at his mocking tone but couldn't help the blush creeping up her neck. "Bite me, Hawthorne."
The corner of his mouth curved upwards. His eyes glittered, as if he was imagining doing exactly that.
In the silence, his gaze traced over her. Moving slowly across her jaw, down her throat, and along her collarbones topping to linger on the curve of her shoulder. As if showing her all the places he longed to bite most.
Emeline couldn't help but imagine it: His teeth on her bare skin. Soft little bites in between kisses.”
― Kristen Ciccarelli, Edgewood

“Soon, she was singing along, tweaking the song as she watched the sun rise over the King's City below. As she sang, her gaze wandered over the shining white walls of the palace beyond the dome. She thought of the Wood King sitting on his white throne. Of candlelit halls and attendants fluttering like moths. Of Claw's silver snout emerging from the shadows, and Rooke falling to his knees before Bog, and that creepy wall of skulls in the crypt...
It was habitual. Whenever she sang a song for the first time, she sealed a memory inside the melody. Like a gift she was packaging for her future self. She'd been doing it for as long as she could remember.
From now on, whenever she sang this song, she would come back to this moment, looking out over the King's City. She would remember the things that happened here.”
― Kristen Ciccarelli, Edgewood

“Above, a vivid painting hung over the fireplace. Inside its frame, a woman was transforming into a tree.
The lower half of her body was bark and roots, plunging into soil, while her waist and chest arched upwards and her outstretched hands reached for the sky. The nymph's dark hair was a knotted mass of branches around her head, sprouting bright green leaves.
It was the myth of Daphne---the nymph who begged the river god to save her from Apollo and was turned into a laurel tree.
"It must be a terrible thing to lose," Hawthorne said, making her jump.
He looked up from where he crouched near the fire: to the woman in the frame. His left forearm was streaked with black ash.
"What's a terrible thing to lose?"
Hawthorne's eyes glittered as he studied the nymph. "Your humanity."
"But it was her choice," said Emeline, feeling defensive of Daphne. If the river god hadn't turned her into a laurel, she would have fallen prey to Apollo. "She asked to be saved."
Firelight flickered over Hawthorne's face as his gray-eyed gaze caught hers and held it.
"Saved," he murmured, considering this. "Is that really what the river god did? As a tree, her life is forfeit. She'll never be human again. She'll never laugh or sing, ponder or love, again. Don't you think she would have preferred the river god defeat Apollo, or at the very least warn him away, instead of taking something so precious from her?”
― Kristen Ciccarelli, Edgewood

“With her hand tucked into his elbow, Rooke led Emeline down halls awash in the golden hues of sunset. Vases bordering the windows sprouted green pine boughs and branches of bright red sumac. As Emeline quickened her pace to match his long strides, the fabric of her dress whispered against the floor.”
― Kristen Ciccarelli, Edgewood

“Emeline's attendants fluttered like moths as they dressed her, oblivious to her unhappiness. They helped her into a midnight-blue gown with two glittering cicada wings stitched down the back in gold thread, cascading from the middle of her shoulder blades to the tops of her thighs.”
― Kristen Ciccarelli, Edgewood

“He had just lifted a finger to his lips when a massive shape materialized from the darkness, glinting as it stepped into the sunlight.
Emeline gaped up at it.
A silver sharp-toothed snout emerged first, elegant nostrils sniffing the air. The snout alone was roughly the size of Emeline's hatchback. The rest of a head emerged, revealing filmy white eyes and gray tufts where ears should be.
Was this... Claw?
If so, he was definitely awake.
His massive paws were tufted too and tipped in sharp nails, reminding Emeline of a lion. But his wings were like that of a snowy owl, tucked primly against his sides. Feathers and scales rippled over his body, the color of silver coins.
A watchdog, Hawthorne had said.
More like a watchdragon.”
― Kristen Ciccarelli, Edgewood

“After they toweled her off, Emeline grudgingly let them dress her in a pale gold gown that fell to the floor. A trail of delicate poplar leaves was sewn into the bodice. The leaves, stitched in ivory thread, trailed gently along the boatneck collar, as if blown there by a breeze. They were so finely wrought, she could almost see them moving.
Next, the women braided her black hair into a knot at the nape of her neck, lacing it through with sprigs of Queen Anne's lace.
Last, they took her sliced palm and carefully salved it, then wrapped it tight with slender strips of gauzy white cotton, fastening it with with a golden pin.
"There," said the curvy brown attendant, her voice like summer rain. A smile ghosted her soft lips as she turned Emeline to the gilt mirror. "Look."
In the polished smoky surface, Emeline found a stranger staring back. Gone was the broke musician who desperately needed new jeans, who wore her grandfather's oversized cardigan to keep him close, and who rarely remembered to brush her hair.
The girl standing in the mirror had stepped straight out of a story. Her black eyes were dark pools in her pale face, and her cheekbones were dusted with gold to match her dress.
She looked utterly foreign and strange.”
― Kristen Ciccarelli, Edgewood

“A rippling murmur echoed through the grove behind her. Emeline turned to see people emerging from the shadows of the trees, gathering to cluster and stare. Clothed in leather and fine wool, delicate lace and soft silk, they held themselves with moonlit grace. Their eyes shone too bright and their shadows twisted behind them, hinting at other shapes.
They were... not quite human.
Remembering Tom's stories, Emeline knew this was the shiftling court.
I'm really here, she thought, resisting the urge to pinch herself. All the stories were true.”
― Kristen Ciccarelli, Edgewood

“Emeline couldn't remember when, exactly, things changed. Only that a moment ago she was walking down palace halls and now she walked a dirt path beneath a midnight sky. Tulip trees lined the path, their flowers unfolding like burning yellow crowns among their green leaves.
The farther they walked, the taller the trees grew, until they were impossibly tall. So tall, they seemed to brush the stars.
The path ended in a grove of silver birches. Moonlight pooled in from the canopy above, illuminating a bone-white throne and a man seated upon it. Atop his head sat a crown of rosebud thorns.
His skin was sunbrowned, his hair moon pale; and instead of robes, water adorned him. It flowed in rivers from his hair, over his neck and shoulders where it began to gush, like a waterfall, down the rest of his body. Emeline could see no glimpse of skin beyond the cascade, but at his feet water pooled and sank into the brown earth. Wherever it touched, gray and purple thistles grew.
The Wood King.”
― Kristen Ciccarelli, Edgewood

“When Emeline passed through, she didn't step onto boardwalk, but flagstones. She paused, disoriented. The darkness of the woods morphed into soft, dewy lamplight and the sour-water smell of Bog was replaced by the perfumed scent of late-blooming roses.
They'd stepped out of a swamp and into... a city.
Before her lay a quiet, cobbled street lined by white row houses, many of them creeping with green ivy. The city stretched out, its streets rising and twisting towards the top of a lush green hill thick with trees. Emeline caught glimpses of rust-red rooftops and stone bridges over steep canals, of a white-bricked bell tower and a wide blue lake.
At the crest of the hill, a fortress crowned the city, gleaming like ivory in the starlight.
It was just as Tom had described it.
"The Wood King's palace," she whispered.”
― Kristen Ciccarelli, Edgewood

“All around them, ember mares rushed alongside Lament. They had never intended to trample her but to join her. The graceful rhythm of their muscular bodies, the thunder in their hooves as they ran...they mesmerized Emeline. Moving as one, they reminded her of a cresting wave. A sea of fire.
And beyond their blazing splendor, all was black.
Night had fallen in the woods.
In the steady rhythm of Lament's gait, Emeline heard assurances she'd been too frightened to hear before. I have you, Lament's hooves pounded out. I am steady and true. I won't let you fall.”
― Kristen Ciccarelli, Edgewood

“Lament's trot soon became a canter. Her canter, a gallop. The forest blurred around them as they picked up speed, blazing through copses and thickets, the rhythm of the horse's hooves drumming like thunder.
Despite the stinging wind crushing past them, it wasn't cold. Heat radiated from Lament's black coat, and when Emeline looked down she found red flames flickering in the horse's mane. Tongues of fire engulfed Emeline's fingers, licking her skin. She jerked hand free, staring in horror. But her fingers were unsinged.
Holy cats!
Was Lament an ember mare?
It was impossible. The wild, unearthly horses were forged of fire and said to be uncatchable. Untamable. In no story she knew had one ever been ridden.
But Emeline had thought shadow skins impossible too.
The pungent tang of smoke smoldered in the air. They were out of the Stain---nothing dead surrounded them here. The forest was lush and green and living. But in the distance, Emeline saw red.
Fire.
It surged toward them from the right, spreading quickly. Emeline was about to cry out in alarm, in case the boy at her back hadn't seen it, when she heard the sound of hoofbeats. Hundreds of them. Pummeling the earth in time with Lament's.
Wait.
Emeline squinted into the distance.
It wasn't a forest fire advancing on them. It was a massive herd of ember mares. Their black bodies raged red, like burning coal, and their manes smoldered with bright flames. They were stampeding, headed straight for Lament with no sign of slowing or stopping.”
― Kristen Ciccarelli, Edgewood

“Emeline turned around to discover the biggest, blackest horse breathing on her face. She stared up into enormous golden eyes. Flecks of red dusted the horse's irises, like a fire sparking, and her hot breath smelled like smoke.
Holy hell.
Emeline stepped quickly back----straight into the boy. The scent of him enveloped her: like crushed pine needles and oiled leather.
"This is Lament."
"Uh-huh," she whispered, staring at the massive beast, which was pawing the ground as if to say, I'm getting impatient! Let us leave! When she threw back her head, those golden eyes flickered red.”
― Kristen Ciccarelli, Edgewood

“In its place rested a flower. A white anemone, pretty as a star.
What the...?
Emeline pinched the flower's stem between her fingers and plucked it out from beneath her stool. Light caught in the translucent white petals circling the black center.
The sight sent a chill down her back.
"If this is a prank," she murmured to the woods, "it's not your best work.”
― Kristen Ciccarelli, Edgewood