Rissa > Recent Status Updates

…Molly practiced making Aster smile, something that had the potential to become a dangerous new hobby if she didn’t manage it properly.
He had such a nice smile.

"It's daunting," he continued, "the task of earning that trust again. I'm not even sure how I did it the first time."

"I'll try again. I always do," he said, laughter still washing over him. And even though he was laughing at her, it didn't have the same factor of humiliation his laughter had had in their youth. He laughed at her with kindness, with affection, if there was such a thing. She hadn't known he was capable of that.

Aster was laughing. His genuine smile shot a pang of familiarity, of something that felt like home, straight through Molly's chest.

"Just be gentle with me, Graham," he breathed, reeling her in with her own name. "You've got me on the gallows here." He let her braid fall. "But I'll be damned if you're not the most beautiful executioner I've ever seen."

If a book was an opportunity to lose oneself between its bindings, then a bookstore was an opportunity to find oneself between its walls.

If he was the fire she was dancing with, she wanted him to burn her so she could feel something other than the emptiness inside her.

"I wake up thinking about thee. I go to bed thinking about thee... I spend my days thinking about how I shall ruin your life. And yet thou beat me to it—thou ruined mine first."

“…you're always shrinking yourself because your intensity scares people. You can be a good person and dangerous. Stop hiding, Zora."

"Thou art cruel, spiteful, and completely unreasonable," he muttered under his breath, as if I hadn't spoken. "I have never met someone so stubborn. Thou never let anything go. Thou art dangerously impulsive, quick to start a violent fight... distrustful, skeptical, obnoxious—"
"Thank you for noticing."
"—and all-consuming," he said. "A hunger rages for only ... thee."

"But the hunger," he said forcefully. "What if I desire to ... ruin ... the object of my attention?" He inhaled roughly, his gaze glittering with magic as his eyes mapped my face. "What if I yearn to consume her whole and I cannot .. avoid the dangerous inclinations? This hunger is devastating, a constant ache— the darkest of compulsions."

"I just stabbed him."
"I think he liked it."

"I just stabbed you," I said, feeling numb. "And I'm not your anything."
"Thou art just flirting with me. Also, thou dost protest...too much," he taunted with humor.

"Syxzal."
"What does that mean?"
He stared at my lips. "Vexation... damnation... duty... honor... fate."

"Thou art a plague upon me, Ravenal," he whispered with quiet menace. "Tis unseemly what thou do to me."

"Thou art ruinous." His chest heaved against mine. "Thou art temptation of the highest order. No woman has ever tested a man like this. Your violent temperament..." He turned his head to the side and buried it against my neck, inhaling loudly. "Tis perverse." With a tormented rasp, he pressed firmly against my heat, grinding against it through the fabric. "I detest thee."

"Women are the backbone, the foundation, the immovable force that still does not falter when men stand on our spines to grab power. So no, Callum, I am not fragile. The cracks in my soul aren't broken places. They are veins cemented together with rage. And it will take more than the hands of men to kill my spirit, to break my will."

She'd already shot him twice and it'd only seemed to turn him on. She wasn't sure what that said about either of them.

If I'm to be happy, it's with you.
This time, she had told him a fairy tale in only eight words.

“I love you. I would have loved you in defiance of your rejection, and I will love you, in spite of any of your objections. I had no heart to give, until you, and now it has passed to your keeping—and it’s yours—it’s yours—and it will be yours, whether you want it or not.”