Jo

“This is my room,” he points out, affronted. “And that’s my wife.”

“So you keep telling everyone,” the Bomb says. “But I am going to take out her stitches, and I don’t think you want to watch that.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe he’d like to hear me scream.”

“I would,” Cardan says, standing. “And perhaps one day I will.”
― Holly Black, The Queen of Nothing

“He put his hand on my waist, and my heart began to pound, a rougher rhythm than the music. I held my skirt. Our free hands met. His felt warm and comforting and unsettling and bewildering--all at once.”
― Gail Carson Levine, Ella Enchanted

“Have I told you how hideous you look tonight?” Cardan asks, leaning back in the elaborately carved chair, the warmth of his words turning the question into something like a compliment.
“No” I say, glad to be annoyed back into the present. “Tell me.”
"I can't.”
― Holly Black, The Cruel Prince

“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