Skila > Skila's Quotes

“Sage: Are you here to kill me? Because I’ll scream if you do, and you’ll be in trouble.
Tobias: You’ll be dead.
Sage: Yes, but you’ll be in trouble.”
― Jennifer A Nielsen

“Jaron: Lady Orlaine, can I assume this meeting was to debate the mating rituals of the spotted owl?
Lady Orlaine: There was an assassination attempt tonight, sire.
Jaron: Yes, I know. I was there.”
― Jennifer A Nielsen

“Trust is earned, not given.”
― Jennifer A Nielsen

“I loved her. Despite everything. Despite the lies, the betrayal, the hurt. Despite the Archbishop and Morgane le Blanc. Despite my own brothers. I don't know if she returned that love, and I didn't care. If she was destined to burn in Hell, I would burn with her.”
― Shelby Mahurin, Serpent & Dove

“You're to be my wife." Catching up to her in two strides, I reached out to grab her arm, but stopped short of touching her. "That means you'll obey me."
"Does it?" She raised her brows, still grinning. " I suppose that means you'll honor and protect me, then? If we're adhering to the dusty old roles of your patriarchy?"
I shortened my pace to match hers. "Yes."
She clapped her hands together. "Excellent. At least this will be entertaining. I have many enemies.”
― Shelby Mahurin, Serpent & Dove

“I love you, Lou.” His eyes welled with fresh tears. “I—I’ve never seen anyone savor anything the way you do everything. You make me feel alive. Just being in your presence—it’s addictive. You’re addictive. It doesn’t matter you’re a witch. The way you see the world . . . I want to see it that way too. I want to be with you always, Lou. I never want to be parted from you again.”
― Shelby Mahurin, Serpent & Dove

“Well, what is it you all usually do during the day?" I made to pull the door to the stairwell but Ansel caught it and held it open for me. Okay, I didn't just like him - I adored him. "I assume it involves kicking puppies or stealing the souls of children.”
― Shelby Mahurin, Serpent & Dove

“Would my soul remember him? A small part of me prayed I wouldn’t, but the rest knew better. I loved him. Deeply. Such a love was not something of just the heart and mind. It wasn’t something to be felt and eventually forgotten, to be touched without it in return touching you. No . . . this love was something else. Something irrevocable. It was something of the soul. I knew I would remember him. I would feel his absence even after death, would ache for him to be near me in a way he could never be again.”
― Shelby Mahurin, Serpent & Dove

“But you should know,” I breathed, “that if a man touches me in any way without my permission, I’ll cut him open.” I paused for effect, dragging the knife from his throat to his navel and beyond. He swallowed hard. “Even if that man is my husband.”
― Shelby Mahurin, Serpent & Dove

“I'm going to die, all because of a fucking bar of soap.”
― Nisha J. Tuli, Trial of the Sun Queen

“When he bonded to his queen, he would settle for nothing less than someone who set his blood on fire.”
― Nisha J. Tuli, Trial of the Sun Queen

“Gabriel’s a captain?” “Of the king’s personal guard, yes.”
― Nisha J. Tuli, Trial of the Sun Queen

“Her fingers felt small, yet substantial, when he wrapped his own around them. A jolt shot through him at the touch and she stopped, looking at him with a curious expression. Had she felt it, too?”
― Nisha J. Tuli, Trial of the Sun Queen

“I’m not supposed to be doing this…but I can’t seem to help myself around you.”
― Nisha J. Tuli, Trial of the Sun Queen

“Hunger is a language I know. A script I've written a thousand times.”
― Nisha J. Tuli, Trial of the Sun Queen

“I like you, Jase Ballenger,” I said softly. “I think if you weren’t a thief, we might be friends.”
“And if you didn’t whisk out knives and threaten to cut pretty necks, I think we might be friends too.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Oh, how obsessed you are with your pretty neck.”
His hands tightened on my wrists. He pulled me close, his teeth nipping at my neck and between kisses, he whispered, “It is not my neck I am obsessed with, Kazi of Brightmist.”
― Mary E. Pearson, Dance of Thieves

“What is this, Kazi?
I knew what he meant. This. What was this between us? Just what game were we playing?
I had wondered too. Because now our kisses were filled with pauses, our gazes filled with more questions instead of fewer.
I don’t know, Jase.
What do you feel?
Your lips, your hands, your heartbeat.
No, Kazi, in here, what do you feel in here?
His finger stroked a line down the center of my chest.
I felt an ache pressing within. A need I couldn’t name.
I don’t know.
I didn’t want to know.
Let me taste your mouth, I whispered. Don’t make me think.”
― Mary E. Pearson, Dance of Thieves

“What did they do to you, Kazi?” His voice was low, earnest. Even in the dim light, I was able to see the worry in his eyes.
I pretended I didn’t know what he was talking about. “Who did what?”
“Who made you afraid of an open world? An open sky? Was it Venda? Your parents?”
“No one did anything,” I answered quietly.
“Then hold on to me,” he said. “Let me show you the stars.”
― Mary E. Pearson, Dance of Thieves

“If I kissed you again, it wouldn’t be for the show, or for research, or for any reason other than that I wanted to. I’d want to remember every detail. The way you taste. The way you smell. The sounds you’d make.”
― Rachel Lynn Solomon, The Ex Talk

“Choose your words carefully, even the words you think, because they become seeds, and seeds become history.”
― Mary E. Pearson, Dance of Thieves

“Memories are short. It is the forgetting I fear.”
― Mary E. Pearson, Dance of Thieves

“Love didn't even seem like the right word to explain how I felt about her. The word seemed too small, too used, too simple, and everything I felt about her seemed complicated and rare and as wide as the world.”
― Mary E. Pearson, Dance of Thieves

“And why would you care if I was breathing?” “I was chained to you.” The hard reality. “Oh, right,” I answered, feeling slightly deflated. “No fun being attached to a corpse. Dead weight and all.” “I also knew you might be useful. I’d seen your quick—” He paused as if he regretted the admission, so I finished his thought for him. “Takedown? When I nailed you against the wall back in Hell’s Mouth?” “Yes.” At least there was some degree of honesty in him.”
― Mary E. Pearson, Dance of Thieves

“If I cannot be better than them, I will become so much worse.”
― Holly Black, The Cruel Prince

“Kiss me again,” he says, drunk and foolish. “Kiss me until I am sick of it.”
― Holly Black, The Wicked King

“Tell me again what you said at the revel,” he says, climbing over me, his body against mine.

“What?” I can barely think.

“That you hate me,” he says, his voice hoarse. “Tell me that you hate me.”

“I hate you,” I say, the words coming out like a caress. I say it again, over and over. A litany. An enchantment. A ward against what I really feel. “I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.”

He kisses me harder.

“I hate you,” I breathe into his mouth. “I hate you so much that sometimes I can’t think of anything else.”
― Holly Black, The Wicked King

“Kill him before he makes you love him.”
― Holly Black, The Wicked King

“I hate you," I breathed into his mouth. "I hate you so much that sometimes I can't think of anything else.”
― Holly Black, The Wicked King

“I wasn't kind, Jude. Not to many people. Not to you. I wasn't sure if I wanted you or if I wanted you gone from my sight so that I would stop feeling as I did, which made me even more unkind. But when you were gone—truly gone beneath the waves—I hated myself as I never have before.”
― Holly Black, The Wicked King

“His eyes are open, watching my flushed face, my ragged breathing. I try to stop myself from making embarrassing noises. It’s more intimate than the way he’s touching me, to be looked at like that. I hate that he knows what he’s doing and I don’t. I hate being vulnerable. I hate that I throw my head back, baring my throat. I hate the way I cling to him, the nails of one hand digging into his back, my thoughts splintering, and the single last thing in my head: that I like him better than I’ve ever liked anyone and that of all the things he’s ever done to me, making me like him so much is by far the worst.”
― Holly Black, The Wicked King