Valerie

“I stand.

"The Council wants Locke to arrange some amusement to please Grimsen. If it's nice, perhaps the smith will make you a cup that never runs out of wine."

Carden gives me a look up through his lashes that I find hard to interpret and rises too. He takes my hand.

"Nothing is sweeter," he says, kissing the back of it, "but that which is scarce."

My skin flushes, hot and uncomfortable.”
― Holly Black, The Wicked King

“Then he sat down beside the casket and rested his forehead against its cold metal side.
Silence held him in its cold and gentle hands.”
― Richard Matheson, I Am Legend

“But, Mr. Grewgious seeing nothing there, not even a light in the windows, his gaze wandered from the windows to the stars, as if he would have read in them something that was hidden from him. Many of us would, if we could; but none of us so much as know our letters in the stars yet- or seem likely to, in this state of existence - and few languages can be read until their alphabets are mastered.”
― Charles Dickens, The Mystery of Edwin Drood

“The snow fell fast and thick. He looked up for a moment in the air, and thought that those white ashes strewn upon his hopes and misery, were suited to them well. He looked round on the whitening ground, and thought how Marion's foot-prints would be hushed and covered up, as soon as made, and even that remembrance of her blotted out. But he never felt the weather, and he never stirred.”
― Charles Dickens, The Battle of Life