Nis

“It’s you I love,” he says. “I spent much of my life guarding my heart. I guarded it so well that I could behave as though I didn’t have one at all. Even now, it is a shabby, worm-eaten, and scabrous thing. But it is yours.” He walks to the door to the royal chambers, as though to end the conversation. “You probably guessed as much,” he says. “But just in case you didn’t.”
― Holly Black, The Queen of Nothing

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

“You didn’t hear the story I told,” he goes on. “A shame. It featured a handsome boy with a heart of stone and a natural aptitude for villainy. Everything you could like.”
― Holly Black, How the King of Elfhame Learned to Hate Stories

“You didn’t get what you deserved, but you don’t have to live inside that one story forever. No one’s heart has to remain stone.”
― Holly Black, How the King of Elfhame Learned to Hate Stories