Ash

“My liege," I said, bowing low.
"My Lord Aquitaine," he replied, as he stood from the bench. "Is the gate broken, or do you make a habit of vaulting over walls?"
"Only when you are on the other side of them.”
― Natasha Siegel, Solomon's Crown

“I recalled how I had once thought myself a dragon slayer; how I had once gone to war convinced that I would tear my father's serpentine heart from his chest, and in doing so free myself and my mother from his clutches. But now, years later, that day had failed to come. Instead, the walls of his tower had grown taller and taller, and the insult of it had driven deeper and deeper, until it pained me as much as the imprisonment of my mother did.
Perhaps it was selfish of me, to resent my wounded pride as much as her suffering. But resent it I did. And as I stood there that night in England, I could feel that resentment staining my very soul, like the weathered stone before me, going black in the wind and the rain.”
― Natasha Siegel, Solomon's Crown

“Was it worth the trouble?" I asked.
"Certainly. To think, I had feared you might be dull." His eyes trailed languidly over my face, from my hairline to my jaw; a cataloguing, exploratory sort of gaze, one that felt almost violating. "I thought you might be tedious, as your father was. But you are not."
"What am I then? If not dull?"
"I do not know, he replied. "A contradiction. An enemy, an ally. A question and an answer.”
― Natasha Siegel, Solomon's Crown

“I had been naive to ever assume I could keep us at peace. Kisses do not a kingdom make, nor love a conquest end.
I loved him, but that was not enough.
Perhaps it never would be.”
― Natasha Siegel, Solomon's Crown