Kayla

“Hold on to me!” Tedros yelled, hacking briars with his training sword.Dazed, Agatha clung to his chest as he withstood thorn lashes with moans of pain. Soon he had the upper hand and pulled Agatha from the Woods towards the spiked gates, which glowed in recognition and pulled apart, cleaving a narrow path for the two Evers. As the gates speared shut behind them,Agatha looked up at limping Tedros, crisscrossed with bloody scratches, blue shirt shredded away.
“Had a feeling Sophie was getting in through the Woods,” he panted, hauling her up into slashed arms before she could protest. “So Professor Dovey gave me permission to take some fairies and stakeout the outer gates. Should have known you’d be here trying to catch her yourself.”
Agatha gaped at him dumbly.
“Stupid idea for a princess to take on witches alone,” Tedros said, dripping sweat on her pink dress.
“Where is she?” Agatha croaked. “Is she safe?”
“Not a good idea for princesses to worry about witches either,” Tedros said, hands gripping her waist. Her stomach exploded with butterflies.
“Put me down,” she sputtered—
“More bad ideas from the princess.”
“Put me down!”Tedros obeyed and Agatha pulled away.
“I’m not a princess!” she snapped, fixing her collar.
“If you say so,” the prince said, eyes drifting downward.Agatha followed them to her gashed legs, waterfalls of brilliant blood. She saw blood blurring— Tedros smiled.
“One . . . two . . . three . . .”She fainted in his arms.
“Definitely a princess,” he said.”
― Soman Chainani, The School for Good and Evil

“What's the one thing Evil can never have... and the one thing Good can never do without?”
― Soman Chainani, The School for Good and Evil

“Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“It's a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely? To throw off the chains of being for an instant, to shatter the accident of our mortal selves? Euripides speaks of the Maenads: head thrown I back, throat to the stars, "more like deer than human being." To be absolutely free! One is quite capable, of course, of working out these destructive passions in more vulgar and less efficient ways. But how glorious to release them in a single burst! To sing, to scream, to dance barefoot in the woods in the dead of night, with no more awareness of mortality than an animal! These are powerful mysteries. The bellowing of bulls. Springs of honey bubbling from the ground. If we are strong enough in our souls we can rip away the veil and look that naked, terrible beauty right in the face; let God consume us, devour us, unstring our bones. Then spit us out reborn.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History