Kathryn

“It was that stages-of-anger thing. I was shocked and then I got pissed and then I fought like hell … and then I went numb. They called it acceptance, but it wasn’t. It’s what happens when you have only two choices: live with the monster, or kill yourself.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, Ashes

“Why can't you like me?" he said, his voice breaking. His scent steamed then, hot and heady with a welter of contradictions: apples and fire and electric roil of those cold, black shadows. "Why can't you like me just a little?"

She would never know how she might have answered, because he never gave her the chance.

Instead, he kissed her.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, Ashes

“It was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice.”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.”
― William Ernest Henley, Echoes of Life and Death