Ariana

“Rose asked me why I was not more surprised by your feat. He does not understand you as I do, Em, but as you seem to consider him a friend now, I told him the truth: in order to be surprised, I could not have known already that you are capable of anything.”
― Heather Fawcett, Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands

“Most of all, I hate you because I think of you. Often. It's disgusting, and I can't stop.'

I am shocked in to silence.

'Maybe you should shoot me after all,' he says, covering his face with one long-fingered hand.
...
He doesn't look up as I walk around the desk to him. I place the tip of the blade against the bottom of his chin, as I did the day before in the hall, and I tilt his face toward mine. He shifts his gaze with obvious reluctance.

The horror and shame on his face look entirely too real. Suddenly, I am not so sure what to believe.

I lean toward him, close enough for a kiss. His eyes widen. The look in his face is some commingling of panic and desire. It is a heady feeling, having power over someone. Over Cardan, who I never thought had any feelings at all.

'You really do want me,' I say, close enough to feel the warmth of his breath as it hitches. 'And you hate it.' I change the angle of the knife, turning it so it's against his neck. He doesn't look nearly as alarmed by that as I might expect.

Not nearly as alarmed as when I bring my mouth to his.”
― Holly Black, The Cruel Prince

“One doesn’t need magic if one knows enough stories.”
― Heather Fawcett, Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries

“...books became my best friends.”
― Heather Fawcett, Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries