Isabel

“You should be wary of how you are looking at me.
How am I looking a you?
Like you no longer loather me.”
― Heba Al-Wasity, Weavingshaw

“Must you wear that scent?
What scent?
The lavender. The perfume you’ve been using to interrupt my confessions.
If you are implying that I am using it to distract your con—
I am not implying it. I am stating it as fact.”
― Heba Al-Wasity, Weavingshaw

“Altan was not lapsing when he smoked opium. No-smoking opium was the only time when he was not in pain. He had lived his entire life in perpetual pain, always longing to have another dose. She had never understood how horrendously difficult it was to be Altan Trengsin, to live under the strain of a furious god constantly screaming for destruction in the back of his mind, while an indifferent narcotic deity whispered promises in his blood.. That's why the Speerlies became addicted to opium so easily, she realized. Not because they needed it for their fire. Because for horrible god. some of them, it was the only time they could get away from their”
― R.F. Kuang, The Poppy War

“He would not beg Zoya to stay. It was not in his nature to plead with anyone, and that was not the pact they shared. They did not look to each other for comfort. They kept each other marching. They kept each other strong. So he would not find another excuse to get her talking again. He would not tell her he was afraid to be left alone with the thing he might become, and he would not ask her to leave the lamp burning, a child's bit of magic to ward off the dark.
But he was relieved when she did it anyway.”
― Leigh Bardugo, King of Scars