Elizabeth May > Quotes

“Aoram dhuit,” he breathes. “I will worship thee.”
― Elizabeth May, The Falconer

“You know my mother thinks the waltz is indecent."

"Your mother would find the sight of a chair leg indecent.”
― Elizabeth May, The Falconer

“Time won’t fix me. Time allows me to become more skillful at hiding how much I hurt inside. Time makes me a great liar. Because when it comes to grief, we all like to pretend.”
― Elizabeth May, The Falconer

“I'm like him. I'm a monster, too.”
― Elizabeth May, The Falconer

“You want to know what you mean to me, Kam?’ His lips trail down the curve of my neck.‘Every day I wonder when your human life will end, and it scares the hell out of me. ’ His words are hot on my skin. ‘You make me wish I didn’t have forever.”
― Elizabeth May, The Vanishing Throne

“Must you question everything?”
“Aye,” I say. “It delights me to annoy you whenever possible.”
― Elizabeth May, The Falconer

“For heaven’s sake,” I say, “will you please sip the tea so I don’t have to pour you another cup every five minutes?”
“We’re facing an apocalypse,” he replies. “There is not enough tea in the world to calm me.”
― Elizabeth May, The Falconer

“We burn bright, and we burn out. That’s what it means to be human.”
― Elizabeth May, The Vanishing Throne

“He loved you so much that when you died, he might as well have died with you.”
― Elizabeth May, The Fallen Kingdom

“One day, you’ll tell people the story of the faery king and the human girl. And how he watched from afar as she lived out twenty thousand human days. And if she listened closely during winter, when the wind was cold and the nights were longest, she could hear him whisper that he cherished her so much he was willing to give her the world.”
― Elizabeth May, The Fallen Kingdom

“Kiaran’s kiss is fierce, his breathing ragged. ‘Have I ever told you the vow a sìthiche makes when he pledges himself to another?’ He slides his fingers down my neck and his lips are so soft against mine that I barely feel them. ‘Aoram dhuit,’ he breathes. ‘I will worship thee.”
― Elizabeth May, The Falconer

“Perhaps he’s my curse. Perhaps I’m his weakness. Together we left the world in ruins.”
― Elizabeth May, The Vanishing Throne

“I’m not a creature of vengeance any more. I’m not just the girl whose gift is chaos. I’m the girl who endured.”
― Elizabeth May, The Vanishing Throne

“Crimson suits you best.”
― Elizabeth May, The Falconer

“Well,” I say brightly, “we’re getting on splendidly, aren’t we? Glad to see you’re all becoming friends over your mutually violent desires.”
― Elizabeth May, The Falconer

“Kiaran and I have little connection beyond our names. We battle, bleed and hunt together almost every night. He teaches me how to slaughter in the most effective, brutal ways possible. But I've never told Kiaran why I hunt, and he has never told me why he kills his own kind. This is our ritual, our dance. The only one that matters.”
― Elizabeth May, The Falconer

“That’s what family does: They bring home with them.”
― Elizabeth May, The Vanishing Throne

“Sometimes the memories we cling hardest to are the ones that hurt us the most.”
― Elizabeth May, The Falconer

“He opens one bottle and holds it out to me. ‘Drink this one.’

Inside is a milky blue liquid with what looks like thin slivers of glass floating in it. Surely he doesn’t mean for me to drink glass. ‘Am I going to regret consuming its contents?’

‘No. But I imagine you’ll still call me every expletive you can possibly think of.’ He presses it into my palm.

‘I don’t like the sound of that.’ I sniff the vial and scrunch up my nose at a sharp tang that burns my nostrils. Like something that might come out of my chemistry set. ‘Ugh! What’s in this? It smells vile.’

‘I knew a human girl once. She was stubborn, like you. Refused to drink the paltry contents of that bottle, like you . . .’ He pauses for dramatic effect. ‘And she died a horrible, painful death – torturous, really – because she wouldn’t take my advice.’

I scrutinise him. ‘There was no girl who died, was there?’

‘There will be if you don’t drink what’s in that damned bottle.”
― Elizabeth May, The Falconer

“He's in my heart and I'm in his. And I think it’s going to destroy us both.”
― Elizabeth May, The Fallen Kingdom

“Most people would be dismayed by an attempted assassination, but Kiaran seems to regard it as either flirtation or flattery – possibly both.”
― Elizabeth May, The Vanishing Throne

“My ears are bleeding. I have a nasty headache. I'm trapped in a room with a murderous faery and I blame you."

"That's fair.”
― Elizabeth May, The Falconer

“Somewhere between our hunts and our kills and our kisses, he left his mark on my bones.”
― Elizabeth May, The Vanishing Throne

“When Dante described the circles of Hell, he clearly forgot the one where a hungry pixie sits on one's shoulder for eternity.”
― Elizabeth May, The Falconer

“In what way could keeping me in ignorance be construed as protection?’ I straighten a piece of wire to add to the fire-starter. ‘God spare me from such protection, especially when it involves safeguarding my poor feminine sensibilities from life-saving information.”
― Elizabeth May, The Falconer

“Let me tell you a story,” I say instead. “Once upon a time, there was a girl whose life was saved by the faery king—”

“This story sounds distinctly familiar. I think I might have heard it somewhere before.”

I shush him and say not to interrupt. “If anyone asked her how she felt about the king, she would have said she loathed him. He ruthlessly trained her to fight his own kind. He taught her to kill. She learned from his lessons how to quiet the rage that burned inside her. But she had already decided that one day, when she had grown strong enough and learned everything she could about battle, she was going to murder him.”

Kiaran goes still, his eyes glittering in the darkness. He says nothing.

“Her opportunity came one night when he decided she was ready to hunt her first faery. It was a skriker that had been terrorizing a nearby village, slaughtering children in the night. The king handed the girl his sword and ordered her to kill the goblin-like creature.

“She barely won. But in the end, as she thrust the sword deep into the monster’s gut, she felt something so profoundly that she thought it would consume her. So she told the king. She whispered the words and meant them with every part of her rage-filled soul: ‘I hate you. I hate all of you.’ When she lifted the sword again, she intended to pierce it right through his heart.

“That was the first time the girl had ever seen the faery king smile.”

I lift my hand and press my palm to Kiaran’s cheek. “You’ll have to finish the story. She never knew why he smiled. Just that one day, she wanted to see him do it again. So she dropped the sword and spared his life. And she never told the king what really happened that night.”

Kiaran looks amused. “The king knew the girl’s plan all along. He smiled because he decided he liked her. She kept things interesting.”

I stare at him. “So the faery king is a deranged sort. As the girl always suspected.”

“How about his side of this story?” He pulls me close, his lips soft on my shoulder. “He never told the girl that during a hunt, when she ran alongside him with the wind in her hair and the moonlight behind her, that she was the most magnificent thing he had ever seen and he wanted her.”

Then Kiaran’s hands are in my hair, lips brushing mine. “And when the king watched her in battle, she’d look over at him with a smile and he desired her.

“It was never at once,” he continued. “It was after everything they had gone through and then it was the king and the girl facing an entire army together. And he knew the truth. His heart was hers. It always was. It always will be.”

A shadow crosses Kiaran’s irises. A reminder that he’s still fighting. Just to be here. With me. He shuts his eyes, expression strained. Before I can ask if he’s all right, he pulls me against him and holds me close.

His next words are spoken under his breath, so low I wonder if I heard them at all. “The girl helps the king keep his darkness at bay.”
― Elizabeth May, The Fallen Kingdom

“Aithinne wasn’t hardened by war; she was humanized by it.”
― Elizabeth May, The Vanishing Throne

“Every woman is never enough; she's always too much. We angered someone, somewhere, for our too muchness.
If to be too much is to be a witch, then I am a witch, and we are all witches. I told this to the other girls, and I heard them all whisper back yes, because to be a witch means our too muchness serves a purpose: it gives us power.”
― Elizabeth May, Toil & Trouble: 15 Tales of Women & Witchcraft

“Well,” Gavin drawls, “at least now I know what to do if that ever happens. I’ll throw a jar of honey and run like hell.”
― Elizabeth May, The Falconer

“Is she going to cry? I don’t believe I’ve ever made a faery cry before – except Derrick, and that was only while I was reading him A Christmas Carol and Scrooge stopped being a bastard; Derrick said he had something in his eye.”
― Elizabeth May, The Vanishing Throne