Nessie

“Jack kissed him so carefully that August thought he would fall to pieces. Kissed him with the weight of knowing the price of risk. Then he gazed back at August like his heart was already breaking.

It was the same face that Jack had made on the roof, in the middle of the night, when they rolled in the grass, when he sat back with August’s blood and ink on his hands, when his face was lit orange with flames, when he’d opened the door to Rina’s room, when he stared across the gym at the homecoming dance, when he pulled him from the river and breathed him back to life.

Jack had been waiting. He’d been trying. He was scared. There were tears in his eyes and it took August’s breath away.”
― K. Ancrum, The Wicker King

“His eyes are open, watching my flushed face, my ragged breathing. I try to stop myself from making embarrassing noises. It’s more intimate than the way he’s touching me, to be looked at like that. I hate that he knows what he’s doing and I don’t. I hate being vulnerable. I hate that I throw my head back, baring my throat. I hate the way I cling to him, the nails of one hand digging into his back, my thoughts splintering, and the single last thing in my head: that I like him better than I’ve ever liked anyone and that of all the things he’s ever done to me, making me like him so much is by far the worst.”
― Holly Black, The Wicked King

“If you’re the sickness, I suppose you can’t also be the cure.”
― Holly Black, The Wicked King

“Bitter wisdom is better than sweet folly.”
― Matshona Dhliwayo