Asia

“I looked up through a scatter of fluttering leaves silhouetted against the rosy autumn sunset.”
― Ben Carson, Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story

“Dusk had fallen. Outside the lanterns in the garden were being lit, a string of stars strewn across the grounds. She had missed this room, who Nikolai became in this room, the man who for a moment might let the mantle of king fall away, who trusted her enough to close his eyes and fall in to dreams as she stood watch. She needed to get back to the Little Palace, check on Princess Ehri, talk to Tamar, forge a plan. But this might be the last time she saw him this way.

At last she rose and turned down the lights.

"Don't go," he said, still half asleep.

"I have to bathe. I smell like a forest fire."

"You smell like wildflowers. You always do. What can I say to make you stay?" His words trailed off in to a drowsy mumble as he fell back asleep.

Tell me it's more than war and worry that makes you speak those words. Tell me what they would mean if you weren't a king and I weren't a soldier. But she didn't want to hear any of that, not really. Sweet words and grand declarations were for other people, other lives.

She brushed the hair back from his face, planted a kiss on his forehead. "I would stay forever if I could," she whispered. He wouldn't remember anyway.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Rule of Wolves

“Jacks’s chest was heaving, his clothes were soaked, his hair was a mess across his face—yet in that moment, Evangeline knew he would carry her through more than just freezing waters. He would pull her through fire if he had to, haul her from the clutches of war, from falling cities and breaking worlds. And for one brittle heartbeat, Evangeline understood why so many girls had died from his lips. If Jacks hadn’t betrayed her, if he hadn’t set her up for murder, she might have been a little bewitched by him.”
― Stephanie Garber, The Ballad of Never After

“Lucrezia had not known it was possible to fall asleep--or, at least, a halfway version of it--on horseback. That you could be riding along, a leading rein stretching from your horse's bridle to the hand of a groomsman, mounted beside you, and your head could tilt forward, slowly, so slowly, and you would believe you were just resting your eyes for a moment, but then you would jerk it upright again and see that the sun had slipped down behind the rocks and the trees had clothed themselves in darkness and the night sky was a black bowl upturned over your head.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, The Marriage Portrait