Lyra

“But in a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. Such a constellation was he to me.”
― Miller Madeline, Circé

“If I could use every skill I learned from the back-alley criminals, I would have.
How dare he speak of her. How dare he speak of lost children when he made a choice to lose his, when I would have taken my own life a thousand times over to save her.
I would've undertaken ask his labors without blinking for even a chance of saving mine, when he did them to forget his.”
― Phoenicia Rogerson, Herc

“He sat, smoothing the wide legs of his trousers and hiding a smile. Glancing up through his lashes, he studied first Pjerin then Olina. The duc, in his late twenties, was a powerfully built man whose height made him appear deceptively slender. His aunt, eleven years older, was a slender woman who radiated power. He wore his thick black hair tied back at the nape of his neck with a bit of leather. She wore hers in one heavy braid wrapped around her head like an ebony crown. He smouldered. She flamed. They were both tall, and dark, and beautiful, and Albek loved to watch them fight.”
― Tanya Huff, Sing the Four Quarters

“You're nobody's rainbow.
You're nobody's princess.
You're nobody's doorway but your own,
and the only one who gets to tell you how
your story ends is you.”
― Seanan McGuire, Every Heart a Doorway