astarion's bhaal babe (wingspan matters)

“He'd never forget the moment James's eyes had met his—the sensation of coming home, as though they knew each other.”
― C.S. Pacat, Dark Rise

“After Lauren disappeared, the police and the media saw what they wanted to see: a young, beautiful wife and mother who had married her high school sweetheart and settled in their hometown.
She should have been cable news catnip, the pretty white girl from a good family whom viewers could ogle and pity at the same time.
But this is what I've learned: the dead or missing girl is never the subject of the story. Sometimes she's not even the object. She is the circumstance, the accident, the nexus through which vectors cross. No one really knows her, not even the people who were closest to her in life. She becomes a stranger when you realize that her last moments were incomprehensible, an abyss you can't fathom.”
― Polly Stewart, The Good Ones

“Pete’s eyes followed not the vehicle as it trundled forward but instead the varied and complicated horizon of the desert. The very last of the sun played over it and every stalk of grass dripped with honeyed light. His back ached and his arms were pebbled with goose bumps, but as he savored the view and sucked in big, juniper-scented breaths, he was still besotted.
The desert, which was not given to sympathy or sentiment, was nonetheless moved, and for the first time in a long time, it loved someone back.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, All the Crooked Saints

“Love doesn't always look nice.”
― Stephanie Kuehn, Charm & Strange