Nancy Gomes

“Maybe the perfection of his furnishings was trying to compensate for something. A well-ordered house for a decaying mind.”
― Ava Reid, A Study in Drowning

“The Fairy King had many forms, and some looked on the surface, identical. Some days, I could not tell if the husband who came to me was the one who would kiss my eyes closed with infinite tenderness, or if he would press me down into our bed and not care that I whimpered. Those were the more difficult days. When I could not tell the kind version of him from cruel. I wished he would be a serpent, a cloven-footed creature, a winged beast –anything but a man.”
― Ava Reid, A Study in Drowning

“And well, I suppose that’s partly why I don’t have much faith in the notion of permanence. Anything can be taken from you at any moment. Even the past isn’t guaranteed. You can lose that too, slowly, like water eating away at stone.”
― Ava Reid, A Study in Drowning

“Effy found herself half in love with the Fairy King sometimes, too. The tender belly of his cruelty made her heart flutter. There was an intimacy to all violence, she supposed. The better you knew someone, the more terribly you could hurt them.”
― Ava Reid, A Study in Drowning