Alice

“I was a Shinigami and a Reaper and a murderer. I was a goddess who he would never worship because he didn’t even know I existed. And I was Ren, but I didn’t want a human to call me that. No one had called me that in a decade. No one dared to. These days, it was just "Your Highness.”
― Kylie Lee Baker, The Empress of Time

“I panted and stared back at my reflection in the dark waters, face and neck painted red, eyes wild and burning black. I didn’t look like the Goddess of Death, but a girl who couldn’t remember sunlight. A wicked creature who lived under bridges like a troll, ugly and alone.”
― Kylie Lee Baker, The Empress of Time

“That didn’t sound like me. At least, it didn’t sound like the person I used to be. Sounded more like my father, if anything. A thought that makes me sick to my stomach. But this is what war does to you: hollows you out, makes you brutal, builds up walls inside you.”
― William Hussey, The Boy I Love

“The police always arrived too late, long after the echoes of screams had faded away and the blood had run dry, leaving dark stains across the floor. They would find no clues at all, no broken doors or windows, no fingerprints or stray hairs, as if the monster had never even existed. The only pattern between the deaths was the state of the bodies: rib cages opened up like books, organs spilled across the floor, and hearts mysteriously absent.
So the humans prayed to gods who couldn’t intervene even if they’d wanted to, made shrines to benevolent Yōkai, and lit one thousand lights to banish the shadows. But none of it made any difference, because it wasn’t a Yōkai at all.
It was me.”
― Kylie Lee Baker, The Empress of Time