Mariana

“He dropped to his knees, and the air between them rippled with Karou’s crippling magic and with memory. The day of her death, this is what she had seen, this: Akiva on his knees, sick with the weight of this same magic coursing off Thiago’s soldiers, and he had struggled to hold his head up and look at her—just like this—with horror and despair and love—and she had wanted more than she had ever wanted anything to go to him and hold him, whisper to him that she loved him and was going to save him, but she couldn’t, not then, and she couldn’t now, not because of shackles or pinions or the executioner’s ax but because he was the enemy. He had proven it beyond any horror she would ever have believed, beyond any betrayal she could ever have dreamed, and he could never be forgiven, not ever.

But… then… her hands fell to her sides.”
― Laini Taylor, Days of Blood & Starlight

“It was one of those dreams that invade the space between seconds, proving sleep has its own physics- where time shrinks and swells, lifetimes unspool in a blink, and cities burn to ash in a mere flutter of lashes.”
― Laini Taylor, Days of Blood & Starlight

“We can’t expect the world to be better than we make it.”
― Laini Taylor, Days of Blood & Starlight

“It’s not a man’s working hours that are important – it’s his leisure hours.”
― Agatha Christie, Hercule Poirot: The Complete Short Stories: The Ultimate Collection of Agatha Christie Detective Mystery Tales