Raisa

“Her hand pressed against her stomach, and she gave a low sob. “I don’t want to choose.” Her voice was rasping, and it hurt to speak. “I always have to choose, and I never get to choose you. I’m so tired of not getting to choose you.”
― SenLin Yu, Manacled

“For the first time, Draco Malfoy was fully human to her. She’d slipped
through his walls and peeled away his defensive layers of malice and
cruelty, until she reached the center of him, and there found he carried a
broken heart.”
― SenLin Yu, Manacled

“You saw what those thousands of people did in front of my father. All the fanfare, all the ceremony—the charade, the theater—I can’t stand it. I loathe to think of people pretending they mourn me when they do not, or praising me when they detest me, or remembering me as kind when I was wicked. I cannot bear the thought of anyone offering to go echo-step with me when they do not mean it.' His voice wavered with real emotion, real fear. 'Wei—if I die tomorrow, I beg of you, don’t let them make a spectacle of me in my death. I wish to die quietly, just as I am.”
― Shen Tao, The Poet Empress

“Maybe some stories were like jarred butterflies, I thought, fluttering free as soon as someone broke the glass.”
― Shen Tao, The Poet Empress