Inu

“Whom have you fallen in love with?' I ask.

'Well, there was you,' the prince says. 'When we were children.'

'Me?' I ask incredulously.

'You didn't know?' He appears to be merry in the face of my astonishment. 'Oh yes. Though you were a year my senior, and it was hopeless, I absolutely mooned over you. When you were gone from Court, I refused any food but tea and toast for a month.'

I cannot help snorting at the sheer absurdity of his statement.

He puts a hand to my heart. 'Ah, and now you laugh. It is my curse to adore cruel women.”
― Holly Black, The Stolen Heir

“That's what I've been for years. An unsister. An undaughter. An unperson. A girl with a hole for a life. How appropriate to have my tongue cut out, when silence has been my refuge and my cage.”
― Holly Black, The Stolen Heir

“She's going to want to wear your skull for a hat," Oak warns.
There is an uncomfortable shifting among the ex-falcons. Perhaps they are recalling their own choice to denounce her, their own punishment.
"And Cardan is going to laugh and laugh when she does.”
― Holly Black, The Stolen Heir

“My greatest weakness has always been my desire for love. It is a yawning chasm within me, and the more that I reach for it, the more easily I am tricked. I am a walking bruise, an open sore. If Oak is masked, I am a face with all the skin ripped off. Over and over, I have told myself that I need to guard against my own yearnings, but that hasn’t worked.”
― Holly Black, The Stolen Heir