kay reads

“I want you to know my name,” he said. “The name I was given, not the title I took for myself. Will you have it, Alina?”
I could feel the weight of Nikolai’s ring in my palm back at the Spinning Wheel. I didn’t have to stand here in the Darkling’s arms. I could vanish from his grip, slide back into consciousness and the safety of a stone room hidden in a mountaintop. But I didn’t want to go. Despite everything, I wanted this whispered confidence.
“Yes,” I breathed.
After a long moment, he said, “Aleksander.”
A little laugh escaped me. He arched a brow, a smile tugging at his lips. “What?”
“It’s just so … common.” Such an ordinary name, held by kings and peasants alike. I’d known two Aleksanders at Keramzin alone, three in the First Army. One of them had died on the Fold.
His smile deepened and he cocked his head to the side. It almost hurt to see him this way. “Will you say it?” he asked.
I hesitated, feeling danger crowd in on me.
“Aleksander,” I whispered.
His grin faded, and his gray eyes seemed to flicker.
“Again,” he said.
“Aleksander.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Ruin and Rising

“Write me a tragedy, Lev Fedorov,” she whispered to him. “Write me a litany of sins. Write me a plague of devastation. Write me lonely, write me wanting, write me shattered and fearful and lost. Then write me finding myself in your arms, if only for a night, and then write it again. Write it over and over, Lev, until we both know the pages by heart. Isn’t that a story, too?” she asked him softly.”
― Olivie Blake, One for My Enemy

“Because the possibility of you is better than the reality of anyone else”
― Ana Huang, Twisted Hate

“That’s right, Rae. My Rae of fucking sunshine. Say it again. Say my fucking name again.”
― Ava Harrison, Provoke