Eilis O'Neal

“The day they came to tell me, I was in one of the gardens with Kiernan, trying to decipher a three-hundred-year-old map of the palace grounds.”

“Little cat's paws of trepidation frolicked up my spine.”

“He watches you, Sinda. Like you're his best treasure, only he can't think of a way to slip you into is pocket. Hasn't he-of-the-throwing-daggers been brave enough to mention it?”

“You can't be just a scribe, or a wizard. Nameless God," he cried, raking a hand through his hair. "I wish they had never found you, never made you think you were the princess. Nothing else, will ever be good enough, not now. You'll never be happy. You'll throw yourself into danger, take it all on yourself, just to prove that they were all wrong about you. And I just-I just-"And without warning, he stepped on front of me, grabbed my shoulders to stop my pacing, and kissed me.”

“So, yes, I will marry you. Someday. If you'll have me," he said modestly."Of course I will, you idiot," I said with a shriek, and threw myself into his arms.”

“He wouldn’t have forgotten. It might be too much the fear of losing me so much that he had withdrawn his heart to protect it.”

“I did not have all the pieces of myself intact but the shattered ones lay quieter than they had gradually being smoothed over so that they no longer cut me as often.”

“Please ” I whispered. “Please come back.” There was no one there to hear me.”

“This was what I had now. Just this. I had to make it enough.”

“I just want to be me—I just want to be useful and … content. I want to stop wondering if I’ll ever feel whole and just be whole. I want to have a purpose one that I can look at without feeling like I’m less than I was.”

“Nothing's really changed since then, except that now any children we have might be wizards themselves, and I'll be hopelessly outnumbered.”

“If I thought being kissed by Tyr had been what kissing was all about, I had been wrong. This kiss trampled Tyr's kiss, threw it to the ground, and danced on its grave.”

“How can you be nervous? Don't you see? We're in a library.”