Sarah Mac’s Reviews > Innamorata > Status Update

‘The taste of him was salt & skin, & apostasy. Whatever obedience, whatever duty was left within Agnes fell away from her, crumbled, as a pedestal beneath a statue that had become too fragile to shoulder the weight of its idol.’

‘It was a lucent feeling, softly bright, like morning dew on a daffodil. It was an emotion so foreign to Agnes that her mind stammered & tripped over the word. It was the opposite of hunger, the yawning pit in her stomach, the scraping of bone against bone. There could be no such harsh ugliness when this other emotion existed w/in her, all around her. This thing of nascent, glowing beauty, this hope.’

‘Waltrude saw the lady Agnes as the prince did. She did not see a walking corpse, a ghost in a grayish gown. She saw a vivid creature, all the intricate faculties of life occurring with great subtlety beneath the surface, as roots writhe & swell underground before at last showing themselves green & tender in the dirt.’

‘The moth crawled up onto Agnes’ outstretched fingers. Its wings were dappled black & white, like the bark on a birch tree. The moth then ascended her arm & perched on her shoulder. An unexpected yearning filled her—filled her in a manner that reminded her so bitterly of her own emptiness. Speckling, she remembered, as the creature nuzzled its head against her neck, was for an apology.’ ….The feels. 😢

‘He had taken notice of what she had read & written. Had he taken notice of her hands, too? Perhaps—she tried not to think it, yet the notion fought its way to the forefront of her mind—he wanted her to know that he had seen them. Always, she realized, he had seen her. When nobody else bothered even to look.’ ….I really hope things work out for these two. (It probably won’t, but I can still hope. 💜)

‘Lady Agnes was not unlovely. But her beauty was that of a corpse, death laid over her with a gentle, lambent stillness.’

“What is the meaning of this first one?” Adele-Blanche asked, lifting her head. “That you can imagine a statue stirring to life? Anything in the world can be imagined, yet not all things are worth putting to paper, unless there is a meaning to them. I can perhaps see the motive of the other two stories. In the first, romance overcomes tragedy; in the second, tragedy overcomes romance.”

‘For a reason Agnes could not comprehend, his gaze lay not upon the black tree branches that fingered into the flat gray air, nor upon the mud pit that contained her grandmother’s infinitesimal matter, nor upon beautiful Marozia in the deep-red gown that impressed her on the world like a passionate stain of blood, but upon HER. Silent, grim Lady Agnes, wearing bruise-colored silk.’