Bridge Kingdom Quotes

Be the bridge, be the light. When iron melts, when flowers spring from fields of blood—let the land be witness, and return home.

Even if I'm a goddamned fool for it, there will never be anyone but you.

This man might be a hunter. But he was mistaken if he believed she was prey.

Alive isn't living.

Awake or asleep, all I see is your face. All I hear is your voice. All I feel is you in my arms. All I want is you.

You are my goddamned damnation, but there will never be anyone but you.

Since the moment I set eyes on you in Southwatch, there's been no one but you. Even if I'm a goddamned fool for it, there will never be anyone but you." You are a fool, she thought as darkness took her. And that made two of them.

But in his heart, he knew that even if he never saw her again for the rest of his life, it would never be over. She would always be his queen.

What did you say to Van Eck on the bridge?” Kaz asked at last. “When we were making the trade?” “You will see me once more, but only once.” “More Suli proverbs?” “A promise to myself. And Van Eck.” “Careful, Wraith. You’re ill-suited to the revenge game. I’m not sure your Suli Saints would approve.” “My Saints don’t like bullies.

I'm fine Aren." "I know you are. And I know you can do it yourself. But let me do it for you anyway.

Forgive her. She loves you." He dropped the old woman's arm, feeling Lara's gaze on him. Knowing she was listening. "She doesn't know what love is." "That's why you should forgive her.

As they sped across the bridge, Jesper thought he spotted Matthias and Wylan in their red capes, tossing coins as they steadily made their way off the Stave. If they started running, it might draw stadwatch attention. Jesper struggled not to laugh. That was definitely Matthias and Wylan. Matthias was hurling the money with way too much force and Wylan with way too much enthusiasm. The kid’s throwing arm needed serious work. He looked like he was actively trying to dislocate his shoulder.

I love you," he said, his lips grazing against hers. "And I will love you, no matter what the future brings. No matter how hard I need to fight. I will always love you." The words undid her, broke her apart completely, then forged her into something new. Something stronger. Something better.

Aren't we bold now that we believe we are untouchable.

Kings and queens make decisions, but it is the common folk who pay the price.

Sitting in cold wet britches for an hour was no fun even in a magic kingdom.

She was everything. Mind, body, and soul, she was everything he wanted. Everything he needed. The queen Ithicana needed.

forgive her. She loves you." He dropped the old woman's arm, feeling Lara's gaze on him. Knowing she was listening. "she doesn't know what love is." "That's why you should forgive her.

A lifetime wouldn't be enough. Eternity wouldn't be enough. Not when I want to map every star in the sky with you in my arms.

Its in your nature to survive

She was right, and he knew it. But in his heart, he knew that even if he never saw her again for the rest of his life, it would never be over. She would always be his queen.

I swore to fight by your side, to defend you to my dying breath, to cherish your body and none other, and to be loyal to you as long as I live.

All she had ever known was violence. It was nothing to her. And everything.

My older sister has entire kingdoms inside of her, and some of them are only accessible at certain seasons, in certain kinds of weather. One such melting occurs in summer rain, at midnight, during the vine-green breathing time right before sleep. You have to ask the right question, throw the right rope bridge, to get there-and then bolt across the chasm between you, before your bridge collapses.

I heard you call my name," she whispered. "I heard you order me to fight." "First damned time you ever listened." She smiled, but sadness swelled in her chest. "Don't get used to it.

Tess had said that the river was liable to wash the palace and the city and the whole kingdom off the rocks, and then there would finally be peace in the world. "Peace in the world," Brigan repeated musingly when Fire told him. "I suppose she's right. That would bring peace to the world. But it's not likely to happen, so I suppose we'll have to keep blundering on and making a mess of it." "Oh," Fire said, "well put. We'll have to pass that on to the governor so he can use it in his speech when they dedicate the new bridge.

She was so painfully beautiful, and even knowing that she'd used it against him didn't lessen how powerfully he was drawn to her.

Loved. Past tense. Because she’d never deserved his love, and now she’d lost it for good.

wishes were the dreams of fools

Go!" He shouted the word at her, leveling the arrow at her forehead even as tears poured down his cheeks. "I never want to see your face. I never want to hear your name. If there were a way to scour you from my life, I'd do it. But until I find the strength to put you in a goddamned grave, this is all I have. Now run!" His fingers quivered on the bowstring. He would do it. And it would kill him.

We can save the naked sprints for storm season. It’s far more exciting if there’s lightning biting at your ass.

No one can predict the future, Your Grace. Fate favors the strong. God rewards the good. And the stars never abandon those who dream of more.

Peace is like a dance. It only works if both partners are listening to the same music.

There was, Aren thought, nothing the Great Beyond could offer that would be more perfect than her.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to get my wife back.

Trusting you was my mistake. Loving you was my mistake.

Matters of the heart do not bow to logic or reason. Anyone who does not understand that has either never lived or is devoid of a heart themselves.

Leslie named their secret land “Terabithia,” and she loaned Jess all of her books about Narnia, so he would know how things went in a magic kingdom—how the animals and the trees must be protected and how a ruler must behave.

If there are words for how I feel about you, I’ve never heard them. Never seen them written in any of the thousands of books I’ve read.

You failed me. His brother’s voice, louder than ever in his head. You let him dupe you all over again. Kaz had called Jesper by his brother’s name. A bad slip. But maybe he’d wanted to punish them both. Kaz was older now than Jordie had been when he’d succumbed to the Queen’s Lady Plague. Now he could look back and see his brother’s pride, his hunger for fast success. You failed me, Jordie. You were older. You were supposed to be the smart one. He thought of Inej asking, Was there no one to protect you? He remembered Jordie seated beside him on a bridge, smiling and alive, the reflection of their feet in the water beneath them, the warmth of a cup of hot chocolate cradled in his mittened hands. We were supposed to look out for each other. They’d been two farm boys, missing their father, lost in this city. That was how Pekka got them. It wasn’t just the enticement of money. He’d given them a new home. A fake wife who made them hutspot, a fake daughter for Kaz to play with. Pekka Rollins had lured them with a warm fire and the promise of the life they’d lost. And that was what destroyed you in the end: the longing for something you could never have.

Some women desire a man who will burn the world to be with her. Some desire a man who will save the world at the cost of her. Which sort of man he is may be beyond your control, but you can choose which woman you wish to be.

There would be no happily-ever-after. Not for her.

How am I supposed to get back to shore?” “You have a paddle,” he shouted back, a wild grin on his face as the wind caught at his hair. “Use it!

And do us all a favor and keep your cock in your trousers and your eyes on the enemy for the rest of War Tides.

There was something about her. Something that had spoken to his soul in a way no other woman he'd met ever had.

Good, she was not. Yet neither did she believe that she was evil.

All the books didn't disappear from the world because your young self decided to abandon them. They are still waiting for you.

Awake or asleep, all I see is your face. All I hear is your voice. All I feel is you in my arms. All I want is you.

I am used to it. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

Lara, no matter where you are in the world, if you need me, I’ll come for you. Please know that.

I do want to remake the world so that I can be with you. So that I can get down on my knees and ask you to be my wife. So that I can put a crown on your head and make you my queen. So I can build a shrine and worship you as my goddess. I want all of these things, yet I face a future with none of them, and I don't know whether I want to fall on my own blade or burn everything to ash because I do not want to let you go.

What does that mean?” Matthias asked. “Goedmedbridge?” “Good maiden bridge.” “Why is it called that?” Nina leaned against the doorway and said, “Well, the story is that when a woman found out her husband had fallen in love with a girl from West Stave and planned to leave her, she came to the bridge and, rather than live without him, hurled herself into the canal.” “Over a man with so little honor?” “You’d never be tempted? All the fruits and flesh of West Stave before you?” “Would you throw yourself off a bridge for a man who was?” “I wouldn’t throw myself off a bridge for the king of Ravka.

Perhaps there is some higher power that knows which stars we need to see when we look up, which stories we need to hear. That knows which constellations will lure us to travel the world so that we might see them with our eyes, adding them to the map of sparks in our minds.

I love you, Valcotta. I will have you or I will have no one, because where you go, my heart goes with you.

If one only knows one’s own mind on things, does one really know anything at all?

You are a traitor,” he hissed. “To your family. And to your people.” “No, Father,” she whispered. “That’s what they’ll say about you.

Everything you’ve said, everything you’ve done, everything between us has been a damned lie.

Just because a choice is hard doesn’t mean you don’t make it.

Fate favors the strong. God rewards the good. And the stars never abandon those who dream of more.

You need me because I am the Queen of Ithicana.” Twisting, she threw the knife in her hand, watching as it embedded in the map, marking Vencia—and Aren—with perfect precision. “And it’s time my father was brought to his knees.

If you truly believe in something, you should be willing to suffer for it

Spoons are remarkably formidable weapons when wielded by adept hands.” Sarhina slurped soup off her spoon and gave him a bright smile before digging back into her food.

You are a princess, she told herself. A queen. But above all, she was the little cockroach.

Ice and fire might ravage the world, but still the cockroach survives,” he’d said. “Just like you.

Who did this?” The heat in his voice made her skin prickle.

Since the day we met, there has never been anyone but you. And there never will be anyone but you. You are my queen, and I need you.

And it was not, Aren thought, the worst way to go: with his queen fighting at his back.

Ithicana—and its king—bent to nothing and no one. But he bent for her.

God, you’re beautiful,” he growled. “Insufferable and venom-tongued and the most incredible woman I’ve set eyes on.

She’s beautiful. And kind.” “Yes.” His gaze was intense. “But she’s not you.

Alive isn’t living

To me, a king is a lighthouse. A guide who can cast his glow across his kingdom and bring every last one of us out of the shadows. A beacon who we can look up to when the world seems lost. A bridge who can unite us when our differences seem to stark to reconcile. Tonight, we need a king who is all of those things. A king who can look each of you in the eye and make you feel that you won't just fight for him or his kingdom, but you'll fight for our way of life.

When my grandmother—may she attain the Kingdom of Heaven—was dying, my mother, as was then the custom, took me to her bedside and, as I kissed her right hand, my dear grandmother placed her dying left hand on my head and said in a whisper, yet very distinctly: “Eldest of my grandsons! Listen and always remember my strict injunction to you: In life never do as others do.” Having said this, she gazed at the bridge of my nose and, evidently noticing my perplexity and my obscure understanding of what she had said, added somewhat angrily and imperiously: “Either do nothing—just go to school—or do something nobody else does Whereupon she immediately, without hesitation and with a perceptible impulse of disdain for all around her, and with commendable self-cognizance, gave up her soul directly into the hands of His Faithfulness, the Archangel Gabriel.

And he sayeth, ‘You shall not lie with a man as with a woman; that is an abomination. None who are guilty of homosexual perversion will possess the kingdom of heaven.’ You wanna go to heaven, son?” “Are you planning on being there?” He heard a snort from Lucas, and Jackson suddenly snapped, “Get back in your fricking pulpit, old man. You’re eating his meat and sleeping safe ’cause of him.

The life that I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and that in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place and time my touch will be felt. Our lives are linked together. No man is an island. But there is another truth, the sister of this one, and it is that every man is an island. It is a truth that often the tolling of a silence reveals even more vividly than the tolling of a bell. We sit in silence with one another, each of us more or less reluctant to speak, for fear that if he does, he may sound life a fool. And beneath that there is of course the deeper fear, which is really a fear of the self rather than of the other, that maybe truth of it is that indeed he is a fool. The fear that the self that he reveals by speaking may be a self that the others will reject just as in a way he has himself rejected it. So either we do not speak, or we speak not to reveal who we are but to conceal who we are, because words can be used either way of course. Instead of showing ourselves as we truly are, we show ourselves as we believe others want us to be. We wear masks, and with practice we do it better and better, and they serve us well –except that it gets very lonely inside the mask, because inside the mask that each of us wears there is a person who both longs to be known and fears to be known. In this sense every man is an island separated from every other man by fathoms of distrust and duplicity. Part of what it means to be is to be you and not me, between us the sea that we can never entirely cross even when we would. “My brethren are wholly estranged from me,” Job cries out. “I have become an alien in their eyes.” The paradox is that part of what binds us closest together as human beings and makes it true that no man is an island is the knowledge that in another way every man is an island. Because to know this is to know that not only deep in you is there a self that longs about all to be known and accepted, but that there is also such a self in me, in everyone else the world over. So when we meet as strangers, when even friends look like strangers, it is good to remember that we need each other greatly you and I, more than much of the time we dare to imagine, more than more of the time we dare to admit. Island calls to island across the silence, and once, in trust, the real words come, a bridge is built and love is done –not sentimental, emotional love, but love that is pontifex, bridge-builder. Love that speak the holy and healing word which is: God be with you, stranger who are no stranger. I wish you well. The islands become an archipelago, a continent, become a kingdom whose name is the Kingdom of God.

And the shock that blossomed on his face as she sank her knife into his chest.

Kiss my ass

I wasn’t fond of your father before,” Aren said quietly. “Less so, now.

Two birds,” Sarhina replied. “One stone.” And if there was one thing Lara knew for certain, it was this: the Veliant sisters had very good aim.

For you to become something other than who you are would be the greatest tragedy.

Dalinar took one step forward, then drove his Blade point-first into the middle of the blackened glyph on the stone. He took a step back. “For the bridgemen,” he said. Sadeas blinked. Muttering voices fell silent, and the people on the field seemed too stunned, even, to breathe. “What?”Sadeas asked. “The Blade,”Dalinar said, firm voice carrying in the air. “In exchange for your bridgemen. All of them. Every one you have in camp. They become mine, to do with as I please, never to be touched by you again. In exchange, you get the sword.” Sadeas looked down at the Blade, incredulous. “This weapon is worth fortunes. Cities, palaces, kingdoms.” “Do we have a deal?”Dalinar asked. “Father, no!”Adolin Kholin said, his own Blade appearing in his hand. “You—” Dalinar raised a hand, silencing the younger man. He kept his eyes on Sadeas. “Do we have a deal?” he asked, each word sharp. Kaladin stared, unable to move, unable to think. Sadeas looked at the Shardblade, eyes full of lust. He glanced at Kaladin, hesitated just briefly, then reached and grabbed the Blade by the hilt. “Take the storming creatures.” Dalinar nodded curtly, turning away from Sadeas. “Let’s go,”he said to his entourage. “They’re worthless, you know,”Sadeas said. “You’re of the ten fools, Dalinar Kholin! Don’t you see how mad you are? This will be remembered as the most ridiculous decision ever made by an Alethi highprince!” Dalinar didn’t look back. He walked up to Kaladin and the other members of Bridge Four. “Go,” Dalinar said to them, voice kindly. “Gather your things and the men you left behind. I will send troops with you to act as guards. Leave the bridges and come swiftly to my camp. You will be safe there. You have my word of honor on it.” He began to walk away. Kaladin shook off his numbness. He scrambled after the highprince, grabbing his armored arm. “Wait. You—That—What just happened?” Dalinar turned to him. Then, the highprince laid a hand on Kaladin’s shoulder, the gauntlet gleaming blue, mismatched with the rest of his slate-grey armor. “I don’t know what has been done to you. I can only guess what your life has been like. But know this. You will not be bridgemen in my camp, nor will you be slaves.” “But…” “What is a man’s life worth?” Dalinar asked softly. “The slavemasters say one is worth about two emerald broams,” Kaladin said, frowning. “And what do you say?” “A life is priceless,” he said immediately, quoting his father. Dalinar smiled, wrinkle lines extending from the corners of his eyes. “Coincidentally, that is the exact value of a Shardblade. So today, you and your men sacrificed to buy me twenty-six hundred priceless lives. And all I had to repay you with was a single priceless sword. I call that a bargain.” “You really think it was a good trade, don’t you?” Kaladin said, amazed. Dalinar smiled in a way that seemed strikingly paternal.

For many people, the love or the loss of an animal often becomes a gateway into a deeper spiritual journey. The most pragmatic of men will begin to question the fundamental nature of being when he is visited by an apparition of his deceased cat or dog companion.

his fingers grazed the skin of her back, following a familiar pattern. Scars, which her sister Sarhina had rubbed oil into every night for years until they’d faded into thin white lines. “Who did this?” The heat in his voice made her skin prickle.

Try not to breathe,” I tell Lira. “It might get stuck halfway out.” Lira flicks up her hood. “You should try not to talk then,” she retorts. “Nobody wants your words being preserved for eternity.” “They’re pearls of wisdom, actually.” I can barely see Lira’s eyes under the mass of dark fur from her coat, but the mirthless curl of her smile is ever-present. It lingers in calculated amusement as she considers what to say next. Readies to ricochet the next blow. Lira pulls a line of ice from her hair, artfully indifferent. “If that is what pearls are worth these days, I’ll make sure to invest in diamonds.” “Or gold,” I tell her smugly. “I hear it’s worth its weight.” Kye shakes the snow from his sword and scoffs. “Anytime you two want to stop making me feel nauseated, go right ahead.” “Are you jealous because I’m not flirting with you?” Madrid asks him, warming her finger on the trigger mechanism of her gun. “I don’t need you to flirt with me,” he says. “I already know you find me irresistible.” Madrid reholsters her gun. “It’s actually quite easy to resist you when you’re dressed like that.” Kye looks down at the sleek red coat fitted snugly to his lithe frame. The fur collar cuddles against his jaw and obscures the bottoms of his ears, making it seem as though he has no neck at all. He throws Madrid a smile. “Is it because you think I look sexier wearing nothing?” Torik lets out a withering sigh and pinches the bridge of his nose. I’m not sure whether it’s from the hours we’ve gone without food or his inability to wear cutoffs in the biting cold, but his patience seems to be wearing thin. “I could swear that I’m on a life-and-death mission with a bunch of lusty kids,” he says. “Next thing I know, the lot of you will be writing love notes in rum bottles.” “Okay,” Madrid says. “Now I feel nauseated.” I laugh.

Be the bridge, be the light. When iron melts, when flowers spring from fields of blood - let the land be witness, and return home.

I intend to keep fighting for a better future, even if it kills me

Lara was a spy. The woman he’d goddamned fallen in love with was a spy.

Because she refused to let Eranahl fall without a fight.

Even if I’m a goddamned fool for it, there will never be anyone but you.” You are a fool, she thought as darkness took her. And that made two of them.

And she didn’t deserve it. Didn’t deserve him.

Do not falter. Do not fail.

Family,” Aren answered, and Keris glanced sideways at the other man. Though it was technically true, it still surprised him that Aren would refer to him as such.

Ithicana would pay for its crimes against her people, and by the time she was through with its king, he’d do more than bend. He’d bleed.

Do not let your temper get the better of you, little cockroach. For when you do, you risk your enemies getting the better of you.

You will not die tonight, she silently chanted. Not tonight.

Killing was her specialty.

Wishes were the dreams of fools.

That’s Vitex. He’s Aren’s pet.

At least let them be surrounded by—” “Perfect cocks?” Nine sets of surprised eyes turned to look at Lara, who shrugged.

What? Too good to scrub the skids from an old woman’s drawers?

I’ll never let you go.

I can respect you and still think your shit stinks just as bad as the next man’s.

I didn’t know you were squeamish,” she said, and he noticed a slight tremor in her voice. “I’m not.” He fought the urge to pull away from her. “But I’m spectacularly vain.

Congratulations on your pregnancy. I’ve lost count of my nieces and nephews, but this one will be special.

You should have brought an army. You should have started a war. You should have set the world on fire.

Kings don’t have friends.” Keris walked backward to the door. “But if we did, you’d be one of mine.

I’m not a good man, Keris. And if you insult Lara again, you’ll find out just how bad I can be.

If you let go of me,” she answered, “I shall not be pleased.” “It’s only waist-deep.” She opened her eyes to regard him, steam beading on her lashes. “That’s not the point.

For everyone fighting to change their stars…

A lifetime wouldn’t be enough. Eternity wouldn’t be enough. Not when I want to map every star in the sky with you in my arms.

I heard you call my name,” she whispered. “I heard you order me to fight.” “First damned time you ever listened.” She smiled, but sadness swelled in her chest. “Don’t get used to it.

I choose you. I want to live every moment with you that I can, no matter that I know circumstance will wrench us apart, because I know we’ll fight our way back to each other’s arms again.

You told me once that if you truly believe in something, you should be willing to suffer for it. To die for it. Well, I think that if you truly believe in something, you should live for it.

And when will we be departing, Your Grace?” Jor asked, coming up to stand next to him. “When your little wife says it’s time to go?” “We’ll go when the Queen of Ithicana says it’s time to go.

There exists no bridge between our lives; no path that connects our worlds." "How can that matter? Is this not one day to be my empire, to rule as I see fit? I will build a bridge. I can clear a path.

I will say this once and never again. If anyone harms her, they lose their head. That goes for you, it goes for Aster, and it goes for my grandmother, too, lest she think me ignorant to her ways. Understood?

She knew he was right, but still she said, “I love you.” Aren only walked toward the door. He paused with his hand on the latch, before turning to look at her. “I’m sorry.” Then he disappeared into the night.

Then kill me now. He was across the room in a flash, scooping up a fallen dagger as he went, forcing it into her hand. Gripping her fingers tight over the hilt and then pressing it to his throat. Do it," he repeated azure eyes liquid bright. "But know that my father will lift a cup of wine in your honor for ridding him of me.

I’m not really the ideal messenger for this information, but when a man and a woman—” “I know how babies are made, Keris!” He shrugged. “Just checking. There was the possibility that all your training was dedicated to learning how to poke holes into a man and not learning what happens when a man pokes you in—” “If you say it, I’ll stab you in the face.

Christianity has lost its place at the center of American life. Christians must learn how to live the gospel as a distinct people who no longer occupy the center of society. We must learn to build relational bridges that win a hearing.”7

Ithicana needed a queen who was a warrior. A woman who’d fight to the death for her people. A woman who was cunning and ruthless, not because she wanted to be, but because her country needed her to be. A woman who’d challenge him every day for the rest of his life. A woman Ithicana would respect. And there was one thing he was certain: Lara Veliant was not that woman.

ONCE UPON A time there was a king who had three beautiful daughters. As he grew old, he began to wonder which should inherit the kingdom, since none had married and he had no heir. The king decided to ask his daughters to demonstrate their love for him. To the eldest princess he said, “Tell me how you love me.” She loved him as much as all the treasure in the kingdom. To the middle princess he said, “Tell me how you love me.” She loved him with the strength of iron. To the youngest princess he said, “Tell me how you love me.” This youngest princess thought for a long time before answering. Finally she said she loved him as meat loves salt. “Then you do not love me at all,” the king said. He threw his daughter from the castle and had the bridge drawn up behind her so that she could not return. Now, this youngest princess goes into the forest with not so much as a coat or a loaf of bread. She wanders through a hard winter, taking shelter beneath trees. She arrives at an inn and gets hired as assistant to the cook. As the days and weeks go by, the princess learns the ways of the kitchen. Eventually she surpasses her employer in skill and her food is known throughout the land. Years pass, and the eldest princess comes to be married. For the festivities, the cook from the inn makes the wedding meal. Finally a large roast pig is served. It is the king’s favorite dish, but this time it has been cooked with no salt. The king tastes it. Tastes it again. “Who would dare to serve

life was not possible for him without her. He’d come back to her, knowing that they’d again be pulled apart, that he’d again face this grief. Over and over he’d do it, for as long as they both lived, because even stolen moments in her presence were worth a lifetime of pain.

In the dim kingdom there is a great abundance of all excellent things. There is more love there than upon the earth; there is more dancing there than upon the earth; and there is more treasure there than upon the earth. In the beginning the earth was perhaps made to fulfill the desire of man, but now it has got old and fallen into decay. What wonder if we try and pilfer the treasures of that other kingdom! ("The Three O'Byrnes and the Evil Faeries")

ONCE UPON A time there was a king who had three beautiful daughters. As he grew old, he began to wonder which should inherit the kingdom, since none had married and he had no heir. The king decided to ask his daughters to demonstrate their love for him. To the eldest princess he said, “Tell me how you love me.” She loved him as much as all the treasure in the kingdom. To the middle princess he said, “Tell me how you love me.” She loved him with the strength of iron. To the youngest princess he said, “Tell me how you love me.” This youngest princess thought for a long time before answering. Finally she said she loved him as meat loves salt. “Then you do not love me at all,” the king said. He threw his daughter from the castle and had the bridge drawn up behind her so that she could not return. Now, this youngest princess goes into the forest with not so much as a coat or a loaf of bread. She wanders through a hard winter, taking shelter beneath trees. She arrives at an inn and gets hired as assistant to the cook. As the days and weeks go by, the princess learns the ways of the kitchen. Eventually she surpasses her employer in skill and her food is known throughout the land. Years pass, and the eldest princess comes to be married. For the festivities, the cook from the inn makes the wedding meal. Finally a large roast pig is served. It is the king’s favorite dish, but this time it has been cooked with no salt. The king tastes it. Tastes it again. “Who would dare to serve such an ill-cooked roast at the future queen’s wedding?” he cries. The princess-cook appears before her father, but she is so changed he does not recognize her. “I would not serve you salt, Your Majesty,” she explains. “For did you not exile your youngest daughter for saying that it was of value?” At her words, the king realizes that not only is she his daughter—she is, in fact, the daughter who loves him best. And what then? The eldest daughter and the middle sister have been living with the king all this time. One has been in favor one week, the other the next. They have been driven apart by their father’s constant comparisons. Now the youngest has returned, the king yanks the kingdom from his eldest, who has just been married. She is not to be queen after all. The elder sisters rage. At first, the youngest basks in fatherly love. Before long, however, she realizes the king is demented and power-mad. She is to be queen, but she is also stuck tending to a crazy old tyrant for the rest of her days. She will not leave him, no matter how sick he becomes. Does she stay because she loves him as meat loves salt? Or does she stay because he has now promised her the kingdom? It is hard for her to tell the difference.

I love you, Zarrah. You say that I don’t know what love is, and maybe that’s true. Maybe there is some part of me missing or brokenthat ensures I don’t feel things like a better man would, but I know the way I feel about you consumes me. That it gives me breath even as it steals the air from my lungs. Makes my heart beat even as it cuts it from my chest. What word I give it matters little. What matters is that even after my bones are dust and my name lost to history and history lost to time, I will feel this way for you.

I love you,” he said, his lips grazing against hers. “And I will love you, no matter what the future brings. No matter how hard I need to fight. I will always love you.

For what it’s worth, no one will lay a hand on you in Ithicana. You have my word.

because Aren refused to let Eranahl fall without a fight.

A near thing, Your Grace.” Welran pressed his hand to his chest. “You must sleep with one eye open and your hand on your dagger with such a woman in your bed.

You came to all those realizations while you were taking a shit?” “It’s when I do my best thinking. Now go. I’ll finish the patrol.

How about you take your bridge,” she said sweetly, “and shove it up your ass.

Sarhina stepped between Lara and Nana. “Mind your tongue when you’re speaking to my sister, old woman, or you’ll soon find yourself without one.

I decide what to concern myself with, woman,” Sarhina answered, her voice light and unconcerned. “And at the moment, it’s the pimple on my cheek and you.

Alive isn’t living.

And he so badly wanted to trust her.

This wasn’t her sister. It couldn’t be. Marylyn had always been the sweetest. The kindest. The one who needed to be protected. The best actress.

That you have a big cock.

Peace is a dance,” Zarrah said. “It only works when both nations dance to the same music, and without Keris, Maridrina will keep dancing to the drums of war. He needs to live!

Let my brother go.

Books are heavy.

What? Too good to scrub the skids from an old woman’s drawers? And before you say yes, remember that I wiped your shitty ass more times than I care to count when you were a babe.

But what it comes down to is that Petra Anaphora once tried to blackmail me into killing my wife, and I think it’s long past time she paid for the offense.

The women of Maridrina are the bastion that protects the heart of the kingdom,

Was he…? His head lowered, the bridge of his nose brushing my temple. He inhaled again.

Not when simply destroying the pages would eliminate all the evidence.

But you’re a—” “Woman?” Ahnna supplied. “You’ll find we hold to a different way of life in Ithicana. What’s between your legs doesn’t determine the path you’ll walk in life.

It’s time for my daughter to meet her future husband.

Lara’s stomach flipped as Aren stared her down. Challenged her. “We’re going to pay a visit to Maridrina.

My eyes are on the enemy. She’s standing right there.” Temper frayed past repair, Aren turned and slugged the man in the face, knocking him out cold.

Not all battles are won with fists and swords. Some are won with words and a clever head.

For you to become something other than who you are would be the greatest tragedy.

There is no one but you. How could there be when you hold my heart?

The last thing she heard before she faded from consciousness was the king’s resigned voice: “What have I gotten myself into with you?

They reached the heart of the kingdom and were completely bewildered by what they saw. It was like they were standing in a gigantic tropical garden with large, colorful flowers of all shapes and species. There were weeping willows over small ponds and vines that grew across the ground and up the trees. There were beautiful bridges over many streams and ponds.

You can’t fault her for trying to protect her grandson. She’s fond of you.” Lara shied away from a tree hosting an enormous spider. “Most people are. I’m quite charming, or so I’m told.

Tell him you care. Tell him his life matters to you. Say what you need to say to get him back in the boat. Except she couldn’t. Couldn’t tell him a lie like that only to stab him in the back.

Choosing to do the unthinkable to survive is still a choice, and one they made with clear eyes. Only they can say whether the consequences of what they did are worth the life they still possess.

Everything is always my fault. I touch things and they crumple into shit, like the opposite of King Midas and his gold finger. If I was in a fairy tale, I would be called “PooFinger”, and everyone would shun me and make me go live in some naff shack under a bridge, telling scary stories to all the children in the kingdom about the wench who turns everything to shit, just by touching it.

The glove compartment of my car is empty, but one of these days, I’m going to fill it with an assortment of gloves—everything from boxing gloves to the oven mitts I used when I burned my last bridge.

But I don’t give a squirt of piss for honor. What I care about is family, and if I think you are a true threat to my grandson, don’t think for a heartbeat that I won’t arrange for an accident to occur.

Child should meet her father,” Keris said between his teeth, swaying sideways as the ship tilted, the sails catching the wind. “If only to better appreciate that her brilliance came from her mother’s side.

Lord, I release Your kingdom power in every area of my life right now, in Jesus’ name. I declare that Your strength and miraculous power invade every circumstance that lies before me, in Jesus’ name. Amen!

However, just as legislation was but one part of the larger social adaptation toward people with disabilities back then, shifts in attitudes and associations are still needed to bridge the chronic-illness gap.

To see death coming and be able to look it in the face is part of what human beings gained when they took the path that led them away from the rest of the living kingdoms. Part of what they lost, too, no doubt.

The nicks and cuts that couldn’t be avoided when combat was one’s way of life. She stared at that hand. It offered some strange comfort; what stood before her was nothing more than a man. And men could be defeated.

That’s not good enough. I’m not leaving you to fight this battle by yourself.” Keris’s chest tightened with emotion he couldn’t quite put words to that the man he’d once thrown to the wolves was willing to risk so much for him.

It's easy to want change, but far more difficult to find ways to achieve it. And impossible to achieve it when those in power want the status quo, which is why I dream no further than finding a way to extract myself from these circumstances.

Leaving the age of materialism and duality behind us, we now seek to become Masters of the Spiritual Kingdom ~ moving into the penthouse of ourselves, the crown chakra, as it were. Herein lays all our joy, our progress and our discovery of our superior and limitless Divine powers. By loosening identification with the sense world, we begin to access the greater causal gifts and realms. I believe we must always learn to use our power of choice ~ to develop Spiritual authority, and come out of victim consciousness. It is important to encourage the setting of strong goals (focusing around fulfillment of pure heart’s desires). When the will is highly focused, the reader become receptive to the Higher Way and technologies of God I wish to impart.

If we are to master the scriptural principles of true biblical community, we must master this one: True greatness in the kingdom of heaven involves serving one another. Jesus said, “Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant” (Matthew 20:26).

Well, the story is that when a woman found out her husband had fallen in love with a girl from West Stave and planned to leave her, she came to the bridge and, rather than live without him, hurled herself into the canal.” “Over a man with so little honor?” “You’d never be tempted? All the fruits and flesh of West Stave before you?” “Would you throw yourself off a bridge for a man who was?” “I wouldn’t throw myself off a bridge for the king of Ravka.” “It’s a terrible story,” said Matthias. “I doubt it’s true. It’s just what happens when you let men name the bridges.

Lara’s pregnant. There’s going to be another Kertell for you to watch over, you old bastard.” Jor gaped at them, then flung his arms around the pair of them, pounding Aren on the back. “Let’s hope the little bugger inherits their mother’s brains, because I won’t survive another idiot like you!

Wrap me up in the reddest cloak, in that flight of your tendons, and lead me into another kingdom, into the heroic ability to love, into the combination to every safe, into the wild dice you feel in your sad fingers when roses shipwreck next to the bridge of salvation. When there's nothing you can do.

I’d ask if you’re Keris Veliant,” the man said, “but given you look like Lara with a cock strapped on to her, it seems an unnecessary use of words.” Keris huffed out an amused breath. “Don’t forget the balls.” “Nah.” The man spat into the water. “Lass has the biggest balls I’ve ever seen, whereas you …

For my part, it is the absence from you that cuts deepest, the wound growing crueler with every hour, day, week that I cannot see your face or hear your voice. The hope that our separation will end, even briefly, allows me to endure the pain, but if I were to lose that hope, I think the wound would fester until it consumed me entirely.

Around a mouthful of cookie, Sara answered, “To get in your bed.” He jerked, nearly sending his drink crashing to the floor. “What did you just say?” Taking a large sip of milk, Sara said, “I’m not entirely certain why, but all the aunties used to say Lestara wanted to get in your bed. I assumed you had a particularly comfortable mattress.

Early English roads were terrible. The Crown required landholders to maintain local roads at their own expense, one of three ancient obligations—to keep roads and bridges in repair, to build and maintain fortifications, and to serve in the militia—exacted to facilitate the kingdom’s defense.30 Roads for ordinary communication and commerce were effectively orphans.

In the intricate and mutable space-time geometry at the black hole, in-falling matter and energy interacted with the virtualities of the vacuum in ways unknown to the flatter cosmos beyond it. Quasi-stable quantum states appeared, linked according to Schrodinger's wave functions and their own entanglement, more and more of them, intricacy compounding until it amounted to a set of codes. The uncertainty principle wrought mutations; variants perished or flourished; forms competed, cooperated, merged, divided, interacted; the patterns multiplied and diversified; at last, along one fork on a branch of the life tree, thought budded. That life was not organic, animal and vegetable and lesser kingdoms, growing, breathing, drinking, eating, breeding, hunting, hiding; it kindled no fires and wielded no tools; from the beginning, it was a kind of oneness. An original unity differentiated itself into countless avatars, like waves on a sea. They arose and lived individually, coalesced when they chose by twos or threes or multitudes, reemerged as other than they had been, gave themselves and their experiences back to the underlying whole. Evolution, history, lives eerily resembled memes in organic minds. Yet quantum life was not a series of shifting abstractions. Like the organic, it was in and of its environment. It acted to alter its quantum states and those around it: action that manifested itself as electronic, photonic, and nuclear events. Its domain was no more shadowy to it than ours is to us. It strove, it failed, it achieved. They were never sure aboardEnvoy whether they could suppose it loved, hated, yearned, mourned, rejoiced. The gap between was too wide for any language to bridge. Nevertheless they were convinced that it knew something they might as well call emotion, and that that included wondering.

Abruptly, Lara found herself flat on her back, her chair having been yanked out from under her with a quick jerk of her sister’s foot under the table. “You are such a bitch,” Lara muttered, rubbing the back of her head while Cresta and Bronwyn laughed. Sarhina circled the table, then bent down so that they were nose to nose. “I’m in charge, Your Majesty. Understood?

We are brought into God’s kingdom by grace; we are sanctified by grace; we receive both temporal and spiritual blessings by grace; we are motivated to obedience by grace; we are called to serve and enabled to serve by grace; we receive strength to endure trials by grace; and finally, we are glorified by grace. The entire Christian life is lived under the reign of God’s grace.

Killing should be hard." He stared at the ocean before them, the water only a few hues darker than the sky. "But it only gets easier, doesn't it? Each life you take counting less and less until one day you find that they don't count for anything at all. At which point you realize that it wasn't just you doing the taking. That each death has stolen a piece of your humanity, and what remains is barely human at all.

Maybe there is some part of me missing or broken that ensures I don't feel things like a better man would, but I know the way I feel about you consumes me. That it gives me breath even as it steals the air from my lungs. Makes my heart beat even as it cuts it from my chest. What word I give it matters little. What matters is that even after my bones are dust and my name lost to history and history lost to time, I will feel this way for you.

For me, to be happy is a weakness, because it’s something that can be taken away. I know that because it’s happened to me before. But if I never allow myself to feel happy, then I have nothing to lose. No way for my enemies to strike at my heart. Better to suffer, better for people to remember my failings, because I can handle those blows. I don’t know if I can handle people attacking my happiness, because I’m already terrified that I don’t deserve it.

He frowned, for while there was nothing unusual about the dress Ahnna wore, he did not find that it suited her. She wouldn’t be able to move in her usual way in a gown like that. It was too limiting. “I’d heard that you’d caved to propriety but didn’t believe it. Yet it seems hell hath indeed frozen over, for that, my lady, is a dress.” “And your dismay at seeing it is understandable,” Ahnna replied, “because should we be accosted, you’ll have to defend yourself.

The air is crisp on my skin, and though my hands are wrapped under thick gloves, I shove my fists into my pockets anyway. The wind penetrates here through every layer, including skin. I’m dressed in fur so thick that walking feels like an exertion. It slows me down more than I would like, and even though I know there’s no imminent threat of attack, I still don’t like being unprepared in case one comes. It shakes me more than the cold ever could. When I turn to Lira, the ends of her hair are white with frost. “Try not to breathe,” I tell her. “It might get stuck halfway out.” Lira flicks up her hood. “You should try not to talk then,” she retorts. “Nobody wants your words being preserved for eternity.” “They’re pearls of wisdom, actually.” I can barely see Lira’s eyes under the mass of dark fur from her coat, but the mirthless curl of her smile is ever-present. It lingers in calculated amusement as she considers what to say next. Readies to ricochet the next blow. Lira pulls a line of ice from her hair, artfully indifferent. “If that is what pearls are worth these days, I’ll make sure to invest in diamonds.” “Or gold,” I tell her smugly. “I hear it’s worth its weight.” Kye shakes the snow from his sword and scoffs. “Anytime you two want to stop making me feel nauseated, go right ahead.” “Are you jealous because I’m not flirting with you?” Madrid asks him, warming her finger on the trigger mechanism of her gun. “I don’t need you to flirt with me,” he says. “I already know you find me irresistible.” Madrid reholsters her gun. “It’s actually quite easy to resist you when you’re dressed like that.” Kye looks down at the sleek red coat fitted snugly to his lithe frame. The fur collar cuddles against his jaw and obscures the bottoms of his ears, making it seem as though he has no neck at all. He throws Madrid a smile. “Is it because you think I look sexier wearing nothing?” Torik lets out a withering sigh and pinches the bridge of his nose. I’m not sure whether it’s from the hours we’ve gone without food or his inability to wear cutoffs in the biting cold, but his patience seems to be wearing thin. “I could swear that I’m on a life-and-death mission with a bunch of lusty kids,” he says. “Next thing I know, the lot of you will be writing love notes in rum bottles.” “Okay,” Madrid says. “Now I feel nauseated.

In his sermons, as in the book he published in 2005, The Myth of a Christian Nation, Boyd challenged the idea that America had been, or ever could be, a “Christian nation.” Taking his text from the Gospels, he reminded evangelicals that Christ’s kingdom was “not of this world,” and worldly kingdoms were the domain of fallen man. Evangelicals, he wrote, speak of “taking America back to God,” but the Constitution said nothing about a Christian nation, and America never remotely looked like the domain of God, certainly not in the days of slavery or of Jim Crow, and not today. A nation may have noble ideals and be committed to just principles, but of necessity it wields the “power over” of the sword, as opposed to the “power under” of the cross—which is that of Jesus’ self-sacrificial love. To identify the Kingdom of God with that of any version of the kingdom of the world is, he wrote, to engage in idolatry. The myth of a Christian nation, he continued, has led to the misconception that the American civil religion is real Christianity. Evangelicals, he wrote, spend our time striving to keep prayer in the public schools, “In God we trust” on our coins, and the Ten Commandments in public places. Might it not be, he asked, that the effort to defend prayer before civic functions reinforces the notion that prayer is a perfunctory social activity? And what if we spent all that energy serving each other with Christ-like love? We could, he wrote, feed the hungry, house the homeless, bridge the “ungodly racial gap,” and side with others whose rights are routinely trampled.

Returning to the boat we passed bridges, railroad tracks, warehouses, factories, wharves and what not. It was like following in the wake of a demented giant who had sown the earth with crazy dreams. If I could only have seen a horse or a cow, or just a cantankerous goat chewing tin cans, it would have been a tremendous relief. But there was nothing of the animal, vegetable or human kingdom in sight. It was a vast jumbled waste created by pre-human or sub-human monsters in a delirium of greed. It was something negative, some not-ness of some kind or other. It was a bad dream and towards the end I broke into a trot, what with disgust and nausea, what with the howling icy gale which was whipping everything in sight into a frozen pie crust. When I got back to the boat I was praying that by some miracle the captain would decide to alter his course and return to Piraeus.

Where Western tales begin by shifting us to another time – ‘Once upon a time’ they say, meaning elsewhen, meaning then rather than now – Russian skazki make an adjustment of place. ‘In a certain land’, they start; or, ‘In the three-times-ninth kingdom …’ Meaning elsewhere, meaning there rather than here. Yet these elsewheres are always recognisable as home. In the distance will always be a woodwalled town where the churches have onion domes. The ruler will always be a Tsar, Ivan or Vladimir. The earth is always black. The sky is always wide. It’s Russia, always Russia, the dear dreadful enormous territory at the edge of Europe which is as large as all Europe put together. And, also, it isn’t. It is story Russia, not real Russia; a place never quite in perfect overlap with the daylight country of the same name. It is as near to it as a wish is to reality, and as far away too. For the tales supplied what the real country lacked, when villagers were telling them, and Afanaseyev was writing them down. Real Russia’s fields grew scraggy crops of buckwheat and rye. Story Russia had magic tablecloths serving feasts without end. Real Russia’s roads were mud and ruts. Story Russia abounded in tools of joyful velocity: flying carpets, genies of the rushing air, horses that scarcely bent the grass they galloped on. Real Russia fixed its people in sluggish social immobility. Story Russia sent its lively boys to seek the Firebird or to woo the Swan Maiden. The stories dreamed away reality’s defects. They made promises good enough to last for one evening of firelight; promises which the teller and the hearers knew could only be delivered in some Russian otherwhere. They could come true only in the version of home where the broke-backed trestle over the stream at the village’s end became ‘a bridge of white hazelwood with oaken planks, spread with purple cloths and nailed with copper nails’. Only in the wish country, the dream country. Only in the twenty-seventh kingdom.

The concept of “the Son of God” does not connote a concrete person in history, an isolated and definite individual, but an “eternal” fact, a psychological symbol set free from the concept of time. The same thing is true, and in the highest sense, of the God of this typical symbolist, of the “kingdom of God,” and of the “sonship of God.” … The “kingdom of heaven” is a state of the heart–not something to come”beyond the world” or “after death.” The whole idea of natural death is absent from the Gospels: death is not a bridge, not a passing; it is absent because it belongs to a quite different, a merely apparent world,useful only as a symbol. The “hour of death” is not a Christian idea — “hours,” time, the physical life and its crises have no existence for the bearer of “glad tidings.”… The “kingdom of God” is not something that men wait for: it had no yesterday and no day after tomorrow, it is not going to come at a “millennium” — it is an experience of the heart, it is everywhere and it is nowhere…

have you ever felt the love so close, did you sense the cool wind it blows, when the happiness is all around, and the sync of beats of the heart become a beautiful sound, when you don't fear the heights and the depth, and you feel on cloud nine even on your heart's theft, when the mystery and known become one, and the face of him becomes next to the rising sun, when you hold his hands and cross the bridges, the lakes, the plateaus and the ridges, you feel the world and yourself at the same time, when the silence between you becomes a beautiful mime. when you become the wicked child and he the teacher, and then the love flows without any measure, you feel his protection in the freedom, you enjoy being the queen of his kingdom, you fly in the sky, you run up the stairs, you dive into the sea, you head to towns and cities with glee, head on his shoulders and mind in his dreams, oh, the soul becomes the swan of the love sea and swims, what more you can ask from God in this lifetime, when your love is synonymous to god's hymn?! maybe it is more than what i said, because it has all in it that never fades, love truly and feel its beauty, it is not just the pleasure or pain but a lifetime duty.....

If I understand anything at all about this great symbolist, it is this: that he regarded only subjective realities as realities, as “truths”—that he saw everything else, everything natural, temporal, spatial and historical, merely as signs, as materials for parables. The concept of “the Son of God” does not connote a concrete person in history, an isolated and definite individual, but an “eternal” fact, a psychological symbol set free from the concept of time. The same thing is true, and in the highest sense, of the God of this typical symbolist, of the “kingdom of God,” and of the “sonship of God.” Nothing could be more un-Christian than the crude ecclesiastical notions of God as a person, of a “kingdom of God” that is to come, of a “kingdom of heaven” beyond, and of a “son of God” as the second person of the Trinity. All this—if I may be forgiven the phrase—is like thrusting one’s fist into the eye (and what an eye!) of the Gospels: a disrespect for symbols amounting to world-historical cynicism.... But it is nevertheless obvious enough what is meant by the symbols “Father” and “Son”— not, of course, to every one—: the word “Son” expresses entrance into the feeling that there is a general transformation of all things (beatitude), and “Father” expresses that feeling itself —the sensation of eternity and of perfection.—I am ashamed to remind you of what the church has made of this symbolism: has it not set an Amphitryon story at the threshold of the Christian “faith”? And a dogma of “immaculate conception” for good measure?... And thereby it has robbed conception of its immaculateness— The “kingdom of heaven” is a state of the heart—not something to come “beyond the world” or “after death.” The whole idea of natural death is absent from the Gospels: death is not a bridge, not a passing; it is absent because it belongs to a quite different, a merely apparent world, useful only as a symbol. The “hour of death” is not a Christian idea —“hours,” time, the physical life and its crises have no existence for the bearer of “glad tidings.”... The “kingdom of God” is not something that men wait for: it had no yesterday and no day after tomorrow, it is not going to come at a “millennium”—it is an experience of the heart, it is everywhere and it is nowhere.... This “bearer of glad tidings” died as he lived and taught—not to “save mankind,” but to show mankind how to live. It was a way of life that he bequeathed to man: his demeanour before the judges, before the officers, before his accusers—his demeanour on the cross. He does not resist; he does not defend his rights; he makes no effort to ward off the most extreme penalty—more, he invites it.... And he prays, suffers and loves with those, in those, who do him evil.... Not to defend one’s self, not to show anger, not to lay blames.... On the contrary, to submit even to the Evil One—to love him.... 36. —We free spirits—we are the first to have the necessary prerequisite to understanding what nineteen centuries have misunderstood—that instinct and passion for integrity which makes war upon the “holy lie” even more than upon all other lies.... Mankind was unspeakably far from our benevolent and cautious neutrality, from that discipline of the spirit which alone makes possible the solution of such strange and subtle things: what men always sought, with shameless egoism, was their own advantage therein; they created the church out of denial of the Gospels.... That mankind should be on its knees before the very antithesis of what was the origin, the meaning and the law of the Gospels—that in the concept of the “church” the very things should be pronounced holy that the “bearer of glad tidings” regards as beneath him and behind him—it would be impossible to surpass this as a grand example of world- historical irony—

We are members of families, employees of businesses, and citizens of countries whose goals and aspirations are frequently sub-Christian. When those differences are unjust or evil, we need to distinguish ourselves from them. But where possible, we should gather near, identify common ground, and draw lines as sparingly as possible. Salt should not remain in the saltshaker. A lamp should not be placed under a bushel. Christians should not fail to affirm the good, true, and beautiful wherever we see it, even if it emerges from sources with whom we would otherwise disagree. We need to travel together, even in our differences. Living in the world means seeking common ground with people and pursuits that are not always gospel-centered. For the adventurer, this is welcome news, because it allows us to ask different questions. What might God be doing in this situation? With what struggles can I empathize? What bridges can be built? Where might the kingdom of God be manifesting?

There is one more thing I need. Something that I've needed for days. Weeks. Months. Maybe forever.' The bridge of his nose brushed mine. 'But I know you won't allow it. Not like this.' The pounding in my chest moved lower. 'What... what have you needed for so long?' 'You.' I shuddered. 'So, maybe, just for a few minutes, when no one is looking- when there's no one but us- we can pretend.' Leaning into the cupboard, I felt dizzy, as if I weren't getting enough air into my lungs. 'Pretend?' 'We pretend that there's no yesterday. No tomorrow. It's just us, right now, and I can be Hawke,' he said in the heated space between us. I shook once more. He touched my cheek, sending a bolt of awareness through me. His fingers drifted over my chin, my lower lip. 'You can just be Poppy, and we can simply share a kiss.' 'A kiss?' He nodded. 'Just pretend.' His lips now a whisper against my cheek. 'Just a kiss.

I can think of no one better than Ariel to find a bridge between our two worlds." Ariel smiled back at him shyly. "It'll be a cultural exchange, too." Sebastian raised his claws in delight. "There's nothing that shows off Atlantica better than our music. Shall we have a concert to introduce this young merman to our kingdom?" "You can play your snarfblatt," said Ariel, still smiling. Then she took Eric's hand, and together they dove--- two worlds meeting, just as the sky meets the sea.

women desire a man who will burn the world to be with her. Some desire a man who will save the world at the cost of her. Which sort of man he is may be beyond your control, but you can choose which woman you wish to be.

The surest way to earn trust was to give it.

Because there is no Seventh Kingdom anymore. There is no peaceful alliance. There is no bridge to Annwyn. There are no more fae. …Or so people think.

Wishes were dreams of fools

It’s not enough.” His hand slid down her back, curving over her ass and jerking her closer. “A lifetime wouldn’t be enough. Eternity wouldn’t be enough. Not when I want to map every star in the sky with you in my arms.

Don’t stab anyone in the back,” Aster muttered.