Laini Taylor

I can't imagine you give apologies, Ten had said before, and she'd been right, but Liraz thought that she would now, She would apologize for Savvath. If her voice was her own. If it wasn't reeling out of her, rising and falling in a sound that might have been laughter and might-if she weren't Liraz and it weren't unthinkable-have been sobbing.In truth, it was both. She was going to lose her arms, the clean way or the less clean, and here's where the laughter came in: It was horrific, and it was sadistic, and it was also, literally, a dream come true.

Perhaps Fate laid out your life for you like a dress on a bed, and you could either wear it or go naked.

She'd spoken of their happiness as though it were an undeniable fact, no matter what happened--apart from everything else and not subject to it. It was a new idea for him, that happiness wasn't a mystical place to be reached or won--some bright terrain beyond the boundary of misery, a paradise waiting for them to find it--but something to carry doggedly with you through everything, as humble and ordinary as your gear and supplies. Food, weapons, happiness.With hope that the weapons could in time vanish from the picture.

As to having a preference, that was new too. You take what you're given and you're grateful for it. Once that message is well and truly ingrained in you, it feels like vainglory to imagine one's own likes and dislikes could matter to other people.

Let me tell you something about me. I love vengeance like normal people love sunsets and long walks on the beach. I eat vengeance with a spoon like it's honey. In fact, I may not even be a real person, but just a vow of vengeance made flesh.

That widow__ peak is preposterous. God. It really makes you feel the sad dearth of widow__ peaks in daily life. We could, like, use him as breeding stock to seed widow__ peaks into the populace.___y god. What__ with all the mating and seed talk?_____ just saying,_ Zuzana said reasonably. ____ crazy about Mik, okay, but that doesn__ mean I can__ do my part for the proliferation of widow__ peaks. As a favor to the gene pool. You would, too, right? Or maybe_ She shot Karou a sidelong glance. __ou already have?

What a lovely display of personhood. He's like a good book cover that grabs your gaze. Read me. I'm fun but smart. You won't be able to put me down.

Around Mik, my powers desert me. I lose basic motor function, like my brain focuses all neural activity on my lips and shifts into kiss preparedness mode way too early, to the detriment of things like speech, and walking.

Happiness wasn't a mystical place to be reached or won--some bright terrain beyond the boundary of misery, a paradise waiting for them to find it--but something to carry doggedly with you through everything, as humble and ordinary as your gear and supplies.

Happiness. It was the place where passion, with all its dazzle and drumbeat, met something softer: homecoming and safety and pure sunbeam comfort. It was all those things, intertwined with the heat and the thrill, and it was as bright within her as a swallowed star.

Home. the word always had air quotes around it in her mind. She'd done what she could to make her flat cozy, filling it with art, books, ornate lanterns, and a Persian carpet as soft as lynx fur. And of course there were her angel wings taking up one whole wall. But there was no help for the real emptiness; its close air was stirred by no breath but her own. When she was alone, the empty place within her, the missingness, as she thought of it, seemed to swell. Even being with Kaz had done something to keep it at bay, though not enough. Never enough.

Karou wished she could be the kind of girl who was complete unto herself, comfortable in solitude, serene. But she wasn't. She was lonely, and she feared the missingness within her as if it might expand and... cancel her. She craved a presence beside her, solid. Fingertips light at the nape of her neck and a voice meeting hers in the dark. Someone who would wait with an umbrella to walk her home in the rain, and smile like sunshine when he saw her coming. Who would dance with her on her balcony, keep his promises and know her secrets, and make a tiny world wherever he was, with just her and his arms and his whisper and her trust.

Life doesn__ need magic to be magical.(But a little bit sure doesn't hurt.)

His shadow splayed out huge before him, and his mind gleamed with ancient wars and winged beings, a mountain of melted demon bones and the city on the far side of it--a city that had vanished in the mists of time.

...something was starting to take shape, out of magic and will. Smoke and bone.

The door opened. She looked in the mirror and suppressed a curse. Slipping in behind some tourists, that winged shadow was back again. Karou rose and made for the bathroom, where she took the note that Kishmish had come to de

Again his memory failed to conjure her face. It was like trying to call up a melody while another song played.

What was he? Storyteller and secretary and doer of odd jobs, neither Tizerkane nor delegate, just someone along for the dream.