Cruel Prince Quotes

If I cannot be better than them, I will become so much worse.

Most of all, I hate you because I think of you. Often. It's disgusting, and I can't stop.

If you hurt me, I wouldn't cry. I would hurt you back.

Have I told you how hideous you look tonight?” Cardan asks, leaning back in the elaborately carved chair, the warmth of his words turning the question into something like a compliment. “No” I say, glad to be annoyed back into the present. “Tell me.” "I can't.

What could I become if I stopped worrying about death, about pain, about anything? If I stopped trying to belong? Instead of being afraid, I could become something to fear.

Instead of being afraid, I could become something to fear.

Father, I am what you made me. I’ve become your daughter after all.

I have lied and I have betrayed and I have triumphed. If only there was someone to congratulate me.

Let's have a toast. To the incompetence of our enemies.

So I am to sit here and feed you information,” Cardan says, leaning against a hickory tree. “And you’re to go charm royalty? That seems entirely backward.” I fix him with a look. “I can be charming. I charmed you, didn’t I?” He rolls his eyes. “Do not expect others to share my depraved tastes.

Nice things don’t happen in storybooks,” Taryn says. “Or when they do happen, something bad happens next. Because otherwise the story would be boring, and no one would read it.

Because you’re like a story that hasn’t happened yet. Because I want to see what you will do. I want to be part of the unfolding of the tale.

There’s always something left to lose.

I love my parents' murderer; I suppose I could love anyone.

That’s what comes of hungering for something; you forget to check if it’s rotten before you gobble it down

You really do want me,' I say, close enough to feel the warmth of his breath as it hitches. 'And you hate it.

Before, I never knew how far I would go. Now I believe I have the answer. I will go as far as there is to go. I will go way too far.

I am going to keep on defying you. I am going to shame you with my defiance. You remind me that I am a mere mortal and you are a prince of Faerie. Well, let me remind you that means you have much to lose and I have nothing. You may win in the end, you may ensorcell me and hurt me and humiliate me, but I will make sure you lose everything I can take from you on the way down. I promise you this is the least of what I can do.

There you are," Cardan says as I take my place beside him. "How has the night been going for you? Mine has been full of dull conversation about how my head is going to find itself on a spike.

Desire is an odd thing. As soon as it’s sated, it transmutes. If we receive golden thread, we desire the golden needle.

But kissing Locke never felt the way that kissing Cardan does, like taking a dare to run over knives, like an adrenaline strike of lightning, like the moment when you've swum too far out in the sea and there is no going back, only cold black water closing over your head.

Show your power by appearing powerless.

The odd thing about ambition is this: You can acquire it like a fever, but it is not so easy to shed.

I am tired of caring,” I say. “Why should I?” “Because they could kill you!” “They better,” I say to her. “Because anything less than that isn’t going to work.

He's flint, you're tinder.

But I will not stand in front of your happiness. I will not even stand in front of misery that you choose for yourself.

Cardan looks at me as though he's never seen me before. He looks at me as though no one has ever spoken to him like this. Maybe no one has.

We don't need to be good. But let's try to be fair.

I get why he chose her. I just wish she had chosen me.

No matter how careful I am, eventually I’ll make another misstep. I am weak. I am fragile. I am mortal.

Cardan grins at me as though we've been great friends all our lives. I forgot how charming he can be--and how dangerous that is.

Only idiots aren’t scared of things that are scary.

He looks like a faerie lover stepped out of a ballad, the kind where no good comes to the girl who runs away with him.

I recall that your hands were on her, but her eyes were on me,' Cardan returns.

It's shocking," he says, as though he's giving me some great compliment. "I know humans can lie, but to watch you do it is incredible. Do it again.

You have only seen the least of what I can do.

He leans in and closes his eyes. “Most of all, I hate you because I think of you. Often. It’s disgusting, and I can’t stop.

I stand in front of my window and imagine myself a fearless knight, imagine myself a witch who hid her heart in her finger and then chopped her finger off.

He rises from the throne. “Come, have a seat.” His voice is replete with danger, lush with menace. The flowering branches have sprouted thorns so thickly that petals are barely visible. “This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” he asks. “What you sacrificed everything for. Go on. It’s all yours.

I hate him more than all the others. I hate him so much that sometimes when I look at him, I can hardly breathe.

Nicasia's wrong about me. I don't desire to do as well in the tournament as one of the fey. I want to win. I do not yearn to be their equal. In my heart, I yearn to best them.

Go ahead. Insult me.” His eyebrows go up. “I don’t take commands from mortals,” he says with his customary cruel smile. “So you’re going to say something nice? I don’t think so. Faeries can’t lie.

Sharpen your heart.

I like for things to happen, for stories to unfold. And if I can’t find a good enough story, I make one.

I am coming unraveled. I am coming undone.

And yet, I don’t regret it now. Having stepped off the edge, what I want to do is fall.

Come home and shout at me. Come home and fight with me. Come home and break my heart, if you must. Just come home. Cardan

Clap her in chains," says Randalin. Never have I so wished there was a way for me to show I was telling the truth. But there isn't. No oath of mine carries any weight. I feel a guard's hand close on my arm. Then Cardan's voice comes. "Do not touch her." A terrible silence follows. I wait for him to pronounce judgement on me. Whatever he commands will be done. His power is absolute. I don't even have the strength to fight back. "Whatever can you mean?" Randalin says. "She's-" "She is my wife," Cardan says, his voice carrying over the crowd. "The rightful High Queen of Elfhame. And most definitely not in exile.

This is absurd. This is awful. This isn’t how people show loyalty. This is epic, epic bullshit.

Guard your mortal heart.

It turns out that having kissed someone, the possibility of kissing hangs over everything, no matter how terrible an idea it was the first time.

What if the way I am is the way I am? What if, when everything else is different, I’m not?

Whoever controls the king, controls the kingdom

He stares at me as though I am a stranger, but I have never felt less like one. For the first time, we are both unmasked.

The world is vicious.' Thomas brushed a lock of hair back from my face, his gaze thoughtful. 'The world is neither kind nor is it cruel. It simply exists. We have the ability to view it however we choose.

We all want stupid things. That doesn't mean we should have them.

What they don’t realize is this: Yes, they frighten me, but I have always been scared, since the day I got here. I was raised by the man who murdered my parents, reared in a land of monsters. I live with that fear, let it settle into my bones, and ignore it. If I didn’t pretend not to be scared, I would hide under my owl-down coverlets in Madoc’s estate forever. I would lie there and scream until there was nothing left of me. I refuse to do that. I will not do that.

She's looking around the forest, as though if she can prove it isn't magic, then nothing else is, either. Which is stupid. All forests are magic.

How will I know when I’ve learned it, since I don’t know it now?” he asks. The question sounds like a riddle. “Come back when returning feels like a hard choice instead of an easy one,” I answer finally.

It’s disturbing to see him like this, behaving as though he might have emotions.

I'm not a monster, I'd told her, back when I said I would never hurt Oak. But maybe being a monster was my calling.

I am the Queen of Elfhame. Even though I am the queen in exile, I am still the queen. And that means Madoc isn't just trying to take Cardon's throne. He's trying to take mine.

You think I don’t deserve him,” I say to Cardan. He smiles slowly, like the moon slipping beneath the waves of the lake. “Oh no, I think you’re perfect for each other.

Faerie might be beautiful, but its beauty is like a golden stag’s carcass, crawling with maggots beneath his hide, ready to burst.

There is a pleasure in being with them,” he says. “Taking what we wish, indulging in every terrible thought. There’s safety in being awful.

It's you I love," he says. "I spent much of my life guarding my heart. I guarded it so well that I could behave as though I didn't have one at all. Even now, it is a shabby, worm-eaten, and scabrous thing. But it is yours.

Vivi is right; it cost me something to be the way I am. But I do not know what. And I don't know if I can get it back. I don't even know if I want it.

Mortals are fragile," I say. "Not you," he says in a way that sounds a little like a lament. "You never break." Which is ridiculous, as hurt as I am. I feel like a constellation of wounds, held together with string and stubbornness. Still, I like hearing it. I like everything he's saying all too well. That boy is your weakness.

Have I told you how hideous you look tonight?' Cardan asks, leaning back in the elaborately carved chair, the warmth of his words turning the question in to something like a compliment. 'No,' I say, glad to be annoyed back in to the present. 'Tell me.' 'I cannot,' he says, then frowns.

It’s funny how you get under his skin.” At first, I’m not sure I heard him right. I almost ask whom he’s talking about, because I can’t quite believe he’s admitting that high and mighty Cardan is affected by anything. “Like a splinter?” I say. “Of iron. No one else bothers him quite the way that you do.

In Faerie, there are no fish sticks, no ketchup, no television.

I consider all the things I have done to become a worthy adversary of him, but maybe I haven’t been fighting Cardan at all. Maybe I’ve been fighting my own shadow.

I can feel the moment he gives in and gives up, pulling me to him despite the threat of the knife. He kisses me hard, with a kind of devouring desperation, fingers digging into my hair. Our mouths slide together, teeth over lips over tongues. Desire hits me like a kick to the stomach. It's like fighting, except what we're fighting for is to crawl inside each other's skin.

If you want my advice,” he says slowly, “love doesn’t grow well, fed on pain. Grant me that I know that at least.

Little did Prince Dain know that my real skill lies in pissing people off.

I am no murderer,” says Cardan, surprising me. I would not have thought that was something to be proud of.

Why am I the way I am?” His tone makes it clear he’s proposing something I might suggest he ask, not really wondering about it. “There are no real answers, Jude. Why was I cruel to Folk? Why was I awful to you? Because I could be. Because I liked it. Because, for a moment, when I was at my worst, I felt powerful, and most of the time, I felt powerless, despite being a prince and the son of the High King of Faerie.

I thought I was playing the game of pissing off people who hated me already and eating the consequences.

Love is a noble cause. How can anything done in the service of a noble cause be wrong?

You remind me that I am a mere mortal and you are a prince of Faerie. Well, let me remind you that means you have much to lose and I have nothing.

Three is an odd configuration of sisters. There’s always one on the outside.

Cruel Prince James strode into the chamber, his cape flashing behind him and his terrible, terrible mustache askew with rage,” Lucie narrated the moment James walked through the door. “Does it need be said twice that it’s terrible?” James said. “He required a hot beverage to soothe his throat, parched from barking out his wicked commands all day. Tea, he thought, yes, tea and revenge.” “I’ll just go put the kettle on,” James sighed.

Faeries make up for their inability to lie with a panoply of deceptions and cruelties. Twisted words, pranks, omissions, riddles, scandals, not to mention their revenges upon one another for ancient, half-remembered slights. Storms are less fickle than they are, seas less capricious.

We may not die from age, but we grow weary with it.

I do not understand why he likes me, but it is exciting to be liked.

It occurs to me that if I kill him, I can finally stop thinking about him. If I kill him, I won't have to feel like this anymore.

What could I become if I stopped worrying about death, about pain, about anything? If I stopped trying to belong?

Cardan’s gaze catches mine, and I can’t help the evil smile that pulls up the corners of my mouth. His eyes are bright as coals, his hatred a living thing, shimmering in the air between us like the air above black rocks on a blazing summer day.

He was evil. Cruel, capricious, and dangerous as a cobra. A prince of darkness. Completely evil, and completely in love with her.

Our promises don’t matter. No one expects us to have any honor. Everyone knows we lie.

...the headwaters of Shit Creek are a cruel and treacherous expanse.

When there is a lot of power concentrated in one place, there are plenty of scraps to fight over. If the Court isn’t busy drinking poison, then it’s drinking bile.

I expect her to say The Liar. She gives me a tricksy grin, full of secrets. “What else? The Queen.

Ah! A lady of mystery! My very favorite kind.

I’d forgotten to keep blasting a song in my mind. I remedied my mistake, but the lyrics to “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me” seemed too close to home at the mo-ment. “Culture Club?” Now his mouth curled downward. “And you accuse me of practicing cruel and unusual punishment.

But I can't pretend that I don't like the sound of him screaming my name.

I want to win. I do not yearn to be their equal. In my heart, I yearn to best them.

I thought I was supposed to be good and follow the rules,” I say. “But I am done with being weak. I am done with being good. I think I am going to be something else.

Harden your heart.

I try not to be too conscious of his long fingers tracing over the paper, of the sick thrill I get when he looks at me.

Go ahead. Insult me." His eyebrows go up. "I don't take commands from mortals," he says with his customary cruel smile.

Every day that I don’t beg Cardan for forgiveness over a feud he started is a day I win. He can humiliate me, but every time he does and I don’t back down, he makes himself less powerful. After all, he’s throwing everything he’s got at someone as weak as I am and it’s not working. He’s going to take himself down.

Crowns of flowers on our heads, shooting bows and arrows at the sky. Eating candied violets and falling asleep with our heads pillowed on logs. We were children. Children can laugh all day and still cry themselves to sleep at night.

And no matter how eager you are for it, you cannot make the moon set nor rise any faster.

Get down here before you’re recognized.” “Playing hide-and-seek under the table? Crouching in the dirt? Typical of your kind, but far beneath my dignity.” He laughs unsteadily, like he expects I am going to laugh, too. I don’t. I ball up my fist and punch him in the stomach, right where I know it will hurt. He staggers to his knees. The goblet drops to the dirt, making a hollow clanking sound. “Ow!” he shouts, and lets me tug him under the table.

I hate you," I breathe into his mouth. "I hate you so much that sometimes I can't think of anything else.

I am afraid that if I begin to feel, I won't be able to bear it. I am afraid that the emotion will be like a wave sucking me under.

Do you know what mortal means? It means born to die. It means deserving of death. That’s what you are, what defines you—dying.

It is at that unfortunate moment that one of the knights stops me. "You. Mortal girl in the mask," he says. "You smell like blood." I turn. Frustrated and desperate as I am, I blurt out the first thing that comes to me. "Well, I am mortal. And a girl, sir. We bleed every month, just like moon swells.

He leans in and closes his eyes. ¨Most of all, i hate you because i think of you. Often. Its disgusting, and I cant stop.¨ I am Shocked into silence.

For a moment, Cardan just stares at me with stupid, crow-black eyes. Then one corner of his mouth curls. “Oh,” he says. “You’re going to regret doing that.

You’re terrible at this whole ‘tell me whatever I want to know’ thing.” My hand goes to the crossbow, but I don’t pick it up. He sighs. “Just ask me something. Ask about my tail. Don’t you want to see it?” He raises his brows.

A strange prince, an even stranger night, she wrote later. I don't know if I ever want to see him again. But he seemed lonely too. Should we not be lonely together?

Our lives are the only real thing we have, our only coin. We get to buy what we want with them.

Cardan had trusted Nicasia not to hurt him, which was ridiculous, since he well knew that everyone hurts one another and that the people you loved hurt you the most grievously.

Mithridatism, it’s called. Isn’t that a funny name? The process of eating poison to build up immunity. So long as I don’t die from it, I’ll be harder to kill

I hate you because your father loves you even though you're a human brat born to his unfaithful wife, while mine never cared for me, though I am a prince of Faerie. I hate you because Locke used you and your sister to make Nicasia cry after he stole her from me. Besides which, after the tournament, Balekin never failed to throw you in my face as the mortal who could best me.

I know I shouldn’t love it as I do, stolen as I am from the mortal world, my parents murdered. But I love it all the same.

Someone’s really sold you a bill of goods. Plenty of mortals are better at plenty of stuff than the Folk. Why do you think we steal them away?

Storms are less fickle than they are, seas less capricious.

I step out of my second life the same way I stepped out of my first, holding too few things and with great uncertainty about what will happen next.

Children can laugh all day and still cry themselves to sleep at night.

You’re mortal,” he informs me. In his other hand, he’s carrying an empty goblet, tipped over absently, as though he’s forgotten he still carries it. “It’s not safe for you here. Especially if you go around stabbing everyone.

Prince Balekin smiles back as though their smiles could duel without the rest of them even being involved.

Kiss me. Kiss me until I'm sick of it.

I missed you," I whisper against his skin and feel dizzy with the intimacy of the admission, feel more naked than when he could see every inch of me. "In the mortal world, when I thought you were my enemy, I still missed you." "My sweet nemesis, how glad I am that you returned." He pulls my body against his, cradling my head against his chest. We are still lying on the floor, although a perfectly good bed is right next to us.

Except that I have no marketable skills other than swinging around a sword and making up riddles, neither of which probably pay all that well.

I forgive you, but only because you said 'please.'" Smartass, I thought. Then I groaned at the instant chorus of "Please!" mixed with cries for release from Vlad's prisoners. No wonder he got so sick of the word. "I'm only merciful to one person a day," he threw over his shoulder. "As the saying goes, today isn't your day and tomorrow doesn't look good, either.

Tell me again what you said at the revel," he says, climbing over me, his body against mine. "What?" I can barely think. "That you hate me," he says, his voice hoarse. "Tell me that you hate me." "I hate you," I say, the words coming out like a caress. I say it again, over and over. A litany. An enchantment. A ward against what I really feel. "I hate you. I hate you. I hate you." He kisses me harder. "I hate you," I breathe into his mouth. "I hate you so much that sometimes I can't think of anything else.

I will repay him, although it seems I will have much to repay him for. I will make him proud of me. Everyone else, I will make very, very sorry.

And Cardan is even more beautiful than the rest, with black hair as iridescent as a raven's wing and cheekbones sharp enough to cut a girl's heart. I hate him more than all the others. I hate him so much that sometimes when I look at him, I can hardly breathe.

You are nothing. You barely exist at all. Your only purpose is to create more of your kind before you die. He's wrong about me. I am going to make my mayfly life count for something. I won't be afraid of him or of Prince Dain's censure. If I cannot be better than them, I will become so much worse. -Pg. 210

It's just as I thought," she said. "I prefer you to every single one of these. Some of these look far too proud of themselves, and some look selfish and cruel. You are unassuming and kind. I intend to ask my father to marry me to you, instead of to the Prince in Ochinstan. Would you mind?

Things will be as they always are,” he tells me. “Only more so.

The world is neither kind nor is it cruel. It simply exists. We have the ability to view it however we choose.

A well-seasoned strategist waits for the right opportunity.

I think of Madoc, dozing away upstairs, all his dreams of murder. I think of Oriana and Oak being forced apart for years. I think of Cardan and how he will hate me. I think of what it means to make myself the villain of the piece. "For the next full minute, I command you not to move," I whisper back.

I thought love was just supposed to happen when you least expected it, like a sap to the skull.

London The Institute Year of Our Lord 1878 “Mother, Father, my chwaer fach, It’s my seventeenth birthday today. I know that to write to you is to break the law, I know that I will likely tear this letter into pieces when it is finished. As I have done on all my birthdays past since I was twelve. But I write anyway, to commemorate the occasion - the way some make yearly pilgrimages to a grave, to remember the death of a loved one. For are we not dead to each other? I wonder if when you woke this morning you remembered that today, seventeen years ago, you had a son? I wonder if you think of me and imagine my life here in the Institute in London? I doubt you could imagine it. It is so very different from our house surrounded by mountains, and the great clear blue sky and the endless green. Here, everything is black and gray and brown, and the sunsets are painted in smoke and blood. I wonder if you worry that I am lonely or, as Mother always used to, that I am cold, that I have gone out into the rain again without a hat? No one here worries about those details. There are so many things that could kill us at any moment; catching a chill hardly seems important. I wonder if you knew that I could hear you that day you came for me, when I was twelve. I crawled under the bed to block out the sound of you crying my name, but I heard you. I heard mother call for her fach, her little one. I bit my hands until they bled but I did not come down. And, eventually, Charlotte convinced you to go away. I thought you might come again but you never did. Herondales are stubborn like that. I remember the great sighs of relief you would both give each time the Council came to ask me if I wished to join the Nephilim and leave my family, and each time I said no and I send them away. I wonder if you knew I was tempted by the idea of a life of glory, of fighting, of killing to protect as a man should. It is in our blood - the call to the seraph and the stele, to marks and to monsters. I wonder why you left the Nephilim, Father? I wonder why Mother chose not to Ascend and to become a Shadowhunter? Is it because you found them cruel or cold? I have no fathom side. Charlotte, especially, is kind to me, little knowing how much I do not deserve it. Henry is mad as a brush, but a good man. He would have made Ella laugh. There is little good to be said about Jessamine, but she is harmless. As little as there is good to say about her, there is as much good to say about Jem: He is the brother Father always thought I should have. Blood of my blood - though we are no relation. Though I might have lost everything else, at least I have gained one thing in his friendship. And we have a new addition to our household too. Her name is Tessa. A pretty name, is it not? When the clouds used to roll over the mountains from the ocean? That gray is the color of her eyes. And now I will tell you a terrible truth, since I never intend to send this letter. I came here to the Institute because I had nowhere else to go. I did not expect it to ever be home, but in the time I have been here I have discovered that I am a true Shadowhunter. In some way my blood tells me that this is what I was born to do.If only I had known before and gone with the Clave the first time they asked me, perhaps I could have saved Ella’s life. Perhaps I could have saved my own. Your Son, Will

We have lived in our armor for so long, you and I. And now I am not sure if either of us knows how to remove it.” — “I think of his riddle. How do people like us take off our armor? One piece at a time.

No one feels like you do, so every brush of your skin is a cruel reminder of what I’ve lost. I can barely stand the sight of you because you’re more beautiful than I’ve allowed myself to remember, and when I cut that wire off Maximus and smelled you all over him, I wanted to kill him more than I’ve wanted to kill anyone in my life, yet I couldn’t because of my promise to you.” Slow tears continued to trickle down my cheeks, but for a different reason this time. “You care.” The words were whispered with a despairing sort of wonder. He wasn’t willing to rescind his loveless vow, clearly, but I was wrong about the apathy I’d thought he felt. That he admitted all the above was surprising enough; the fact he’d done it within earshot of his pilots was no less than shocking. Vlad grunted. “Don’t worry. I intend to kill them as soon as we land.

I hate him more than all the others. I hate him so much that sometimes when i look at him I can hardly breathe. page 30

Surprised?” I ask, a fierce grin starting on my face. The most important boy in Faerie and my enemy, finally in my power. It feels even better than I thought it would. “You shouldn’t be.

Have I told you how hideous you look tonight?" Cardan asks, leaning back in the elaborately carved chair, the warmth of his words turning the question into something like a compliment. "No," I say, glad to be annoyed back into the present. "Tell me." "I cannot," he says, then frowns.

Instead of being afraid, I will become something to fear.

Cardan tucks my arm firmly through his before striding into the entryway, and I feel a rush of warmth as I match his step. I can't afford to be less than ruthlessly honest with myself. Against my better judgment, despite the fact that he is terrible, Cardan is also fun. Maybe I should be glad of how little it will matter.

One of his hands slides over my stomach, tracing the shape of my skin. He kisses me again, and it's like falling off a cliff. Like a mountain slide, building momentum with every touch, until there is only destruction ahead. I have never felt anything like this.

I hate you," I whisper before he can speak. He tilts my face to his. "Say it again," he says as the imps comb my hair and place the ugly, stinking crown on my head. His voice is low. The words are for me alone. I pull out of his grip, but not before I see his expression. He looks as he did when he was forced to answer my questions, when he admitted his desire for me. He looks as though he's confessing.

If I didn’t have another reason to cross you, I would do it for spite.

I cannot seem to contort myself back into the shape of a dutiful child. I am coming unraveled. I am coming undone.

Whom have you fallen in love with?' I ask. 'Well, there was you,' the prince says. 'When we were children.' 'Me?' I ask incredulously. 'You didn't know?' He appears to be merry in the face of my astonishment. 'Oh yes. Though you were a year my senior, and it was hopeless, I absolutely mooned over you. When you were gone from Court, I refused any food but tea and toast for a month.' I cannot help snorting at the sheer absurdity of his statement. He puts a hand to my heart. 'Ah, and now you laugh. It is my curse to adore cruel women.

¨You really do want me.¨ I say, close enough to feel the warmth of his breath as it hitches. ¨And you hate it.¨ page 307

Arms around me in the dark. Lips against mine in the sunlight. Do you know why I love you? He knew me. And loved me. And he had never asked me for anything. Even Shade wanted me to die for him. Maybe I shouldn’t forgive a monster just because he loved me that way—but— But loving me that way made him a monster. My doom was the price of saving Arcadia, and only a monster would care more about me than saving thousands upon thousands of innocents. Shade was the last prince; of course if he could save only one, he would choose Arcadia. I would do the same.

Sometimes I go down and stare at it, trying to see my parents in the tide lines of dried blood. I want to feel something, something besides a vague queasiness. I want to feel more, but every time I look at it, I feel less.

What is a king without a crown? That’s a riddle, but one to which we all know the answer: no king at all.

I don’t imagine myself back in a life like theirs; what I imagine is going over there and scaring them until they cry. I would never, of course. I mean, I don’t think I would.

I smile when I'm nervous.

This is weakness, to put fear above ambition, above family, above love, but it feels good. It feels like being powerful.

She gives me a glare fit to singe hair. "Make me a promise that this is going to save Oak's life." "I promise," I tell her. "And make me another promise that it's not going to cost you yours." I nod. "It won't." "Liar," she says. "You're a dirty liar and I hate it and I hate this." "Yeah," I say. "I know." At least she didn't say she hated me, too.

love doesn’t grow well, fed on pain.

come home and fight with me. come home and shout at me. come home and break my heart, if you must. just come home

Never is like forever, I think, and then am angry to be reminded of anything Cardan has ever said, especially now.

Lucie announced she planned to read to James from her work in progress, Secret Princess Lucie Is Rescued from Her Terrible Family. James listened with a carefully arranged look of interest, even though he was subjected to endless tales of Cruel Prince James and his many awful deeds. “I think that Cruel Prince James has been somewhat boxed in by his name,” James offered at one point. Lucie informed him that she wasn’t looking for critique at this stage in the creative process. “Secret Princess Lucie only wishes to be kind, but Cruel Prince James is driven to cruelty because he simply cannot stand to see Princess Lucie best him again and again, in every domain,” said Lucie. “I’m going to go now,” said James.

I poisoned you. Don't worry. It was a small dose. You'll live." "The cups of wine," he says. "But how did you know which one I would choose?" "I didn't," I tell him, thinking that he'll be at least a little pleased by the answer, despite himself. It is the kind of strategy he likes best. "I poisoned them both.

You can't be jealous of me. You don't have to live at the sufferance of the same person who murdered your parents. You don't have to stay angry because if you don't, there's a bottomless well of fear ready to open up under you." I stop speaking abruptly, surprised at myself. I said I wasn't going to be charmed, but I let him trick me into opening up to him.

you’re like a story that hasn’t happened yet. Because I want to see what you will do. I want to be part of the unfolding of the tale.

He leans in and closes his eyes. “Most of all, I hate you because I think of you. Often. It’s disgusting, and I can’t stop.” I am shocked into silence.

It's the thrill of leaping without being able to see the ground below you, right before you realise that's called falling.

She had a way of making everyone around her feel as though every impossible thing was possible.

I hate you," I whisper before he can speak. He tilts my face to his. "Say it again," he says as the imps comb my hair and place the ugly, stinking crown on my head.

The whole place looks straight out of a fairy tale, the kind where love is a simple thing, never the cause of pain.

Ignifex's eyes widened a fraction. "He's a coward and a fool," he repeated distantly, as if he had learnt the words by rote. Then his gaze snapped back to me. "Why shouldn't I know my own shadow?" "He got better than you at kissing somehow," I said. "Don't you ever wonder how?" If Shade was really the prince-and I still thought he was-then perhaps he could stir up some of Ignifex's memories. Maybe I wanted him to be jealous, too. Ignifex opened his mouth to speak, but I cut him off. "You can meditate on that for a while. I need to go look for ways to defeat you.

You think because you can humiliate me, you can control me?

Most of all, I hate you because I think of you. Often. It’s disgusting, and I can’t stop. - Cardan Greenbriar

You think I'm weak.' 'You are weak,' I tell her. ''You're weak and pathetic and I-' 'I'm a mirror,' she shouts. 'I'm the mirror you don't want to look at.

What was it like?" I ask. "Being a serpent." He hesitates. "It was like being trapped in the dark," he says. "I was alone, and my instinct was to lash out. I was perhaps not entirely an animal, but neither was I myself. I could not reason. There was only feelings--hatred and terror and the desire to destroy." I start to speak, but he stops me with a gesture. "And you." He looks at me, his lips curving in something that's not quite a smile; it's more and less than that. "I knew little else, but I always knew you." And when he kisses me, I feel as though I can finally breathe again.

I hate the way I cling to him, the nails of one hand digging into his back, my thoughts splintering, and the single last thing in my head: that I like him better than I've ever liked anyone and that of all the things he's ever done to me, making me like him so much is by far the worst.

Instead, I try to imagine someone she might fall in love with. Maybe it will be a merrow, and he will give her the gift of breathing underwater and a crown of pearls and take her to his bed under the sea. Actually, that sounds amazing. Maybe I am making all the wrong choices.

You’re nothing. The human species pretends it is so resilient. Mortal lives are one long game of make-believe. If you couldn’t lie to yourselves, you’d cut your own throats to end your misery.

As I make my way back to the tournament and my sisters, I can’t stop thinking of Cardan’s shocked face, nor can I stop considering Locke’s smile. I am not altogether sure which is more thrilling and which more dangerous.

I said ten years, but perhaps seven will be enough. That's not so long. Seven years of drinking poison, of never sleeping, of living on high alert. Seven more years, and then maybe Faerie will be a safer, better land. And I will have earned my place in it. The great game, Locke had called it when he accused me of playing it. I wasn't then, but I am now. And maybe I learned something from Locke. He made me into a story, and now I am going to make a story out of someone else.

He didn’t deserve her; he knew he didn’t. He was the Prince of Blood, the son of a monster, who said and did cruel things. Who preemptively leapt to hurt anyone before they could hurt him first. But he would show her that he could change. Magnus could change for her. She was his princess. No. She was his goddess. With her golden skin and golden hair. She was his light. His life. His everything. He loved her more than anything else in this world. Magnus

Pitiful and pitied by no one, why have I come to the ignominy of this detestable old age, who was ruler of two kingdoms, mother of two kings? My guts are torn from me, my family is carried off and removed from me. The young king [crown prince Henry, †1183] and the count of Britanny [prince Geoffrey, †1186] sleep in dust, and their most unhappy mother is compelled to be irremediably tormented by the memory of the dead. Two sons remain to my solace, who today survive to punish me, miserable and condemned. King Richard [the Lionheart] is held in chains [in captivity with Emperor Henry VI of Germany]. His brother, John, depletes his kingdom with iron [the sword] and lays it waste with fire. In all things the Lord has turned cruel to me and attacked me with the harshness of his hand. Truly his wrath battles against me: my sons fight amongst themselves, if it is a fight where where one is restrained in chains, the other, adding sorrow to sorrow, undertakes to usurp the kingdom of the exile by cruel tyranny. Good Jesus, who will grant that you protect me in hell and hide me until your fury passes, until the arrows which are in me cease, by which my whole spirit is sucked out?" [Third letter to Pope Celestine (1193)]

I forbid you from speaking aloud about your service to me. I forbid you from putting it into writing or into song. You will never tell anyone of the Roach. You will never tell anyone of any of my spies. You will never reveal their secrets, their meeting places, their safe houses. So long as I live, you will obey this.

I am married to a prince who will one day be a king. Usually this is where the fairy tale ends. Stories don't go much further than this moment, and I fear there's a good reason for it. A sense of dread hung over today, a black cloud I still can't get rid of. It is an unease deep in the heart of me, feeding off my strength.

You didn't hear the story I told," he goes on. "A shame. It featured a handsome boy with a heart of stone and a natural aptitude for villainy. Everything you could like." She laughs. "You really are terrible, you know that? I don't even understand why the things you say make me smile." He lets himself lean against her, lets himself hear the warmth in her voice. "There is one thing I did like about playing the hero. The only good bit. And that was not having to be terrified for you." "The next time you want to make a point," Jude says, "I beg you not to make it so dramatically." His shoulder hurts, and she may be right about the iron poisoning. He certainly feels as though his head is swimming. But he smiles up at the trees, the looping electrical lines, the streaks of clouds. "So long as you're begging," he says.

In the old stories, despite the impossibility of the incidents, the interest is always real and human.  The princes and princesses fall in love and marry--nothing could be more human than that.  Their lives and loves are crossed by human sorrows...The hero and heroine are persecuted or separated by cruel stepmothers or enchanters; they have wanderings and sorrows to suffer; they have adventures to achieve and difficulties to overcome; they must display courage, loyalty and address, courtesy, gentleness and gratitude.  Thus they are living in a real human world, though it wears a mythical face, though there are giants and lions in the way.  The old fairy tales which a silly sort of people disparage as too wicked and ferocious for the nursery, are really 'full of matter,' and unobtrusively teach the true lessons of our wayfaring in a world of perplexities and obstructions.

I just need to be able to vanquish my enemies. That's all." He looks surprised, "Do you have a lot of enemies, then?" I am sure he imagines me among the children of the Gentry, with their soft hands and velvet skirts. He thinks of little cruelties, small slights, minor snubs. "Not many," I say, thinking of the lazy, hateful look Cardan gave me by torchlight in the hedge maze. "But they're quality.

Why are you being so cruel?' 'Because you won't leave!' Jacks shouted. 'And if you stay, you will die. Chaos hasn't fed in thousands of years. I know he thinks he can control his hunger, but he can't. That's why they put the helm on him.' 'You could have just said that. If you didn't want me to say goodbye or you want me to leave, you don't have to hurt me to get me to do it.' 'I'm not- I-' Jacks broke off abruptly. His eyes were no longer just red, they were blazing with fear. She'd never seen him look so terrified before. She'd been poisoned, shot, lashed across the back, and Jacks had always kept his calm until now. With a great deal of effort, he took a deep breath, and when he spoke again, his voice was soft but uneven. 'I'm sorry, Little Fox. I didn't want to hurt you, I just-' He looked suddenly at a loss for words, as if whatever he said next might be the wrong thing. He's never looked at her like this before. 'Jacks, please, don't use the stones tonight. Come with me instead.' He took a jagged breath. For a second, he looked torn. He raked a hand through his hair, his movements jagged. Evangeline took a step closer. He shuttered his expression and took a step back. 'This doesn't change anything. I still can't have you in my life. You and I aren't meant to be.' 'What if you're wrong?' Evangeline had once heard a tale about a pair of doomed stars, drawn across skies toward each other's brightness, even though they knew that if they drew too close, their desire would end in a fiery explosion. This was how Jacks looked at her now. As if neither of them would survive if they drew any closer. 'Evangeline, you need to go.' A thunderous roar poured out from the Valory, so loud it shook the arch and the angels and the ground at Evangeline's feet. 'Get out of here.' Jacks said. She held his gaze, one final time, wishing she knew how to change his mind. 'I wish our story could have had another ending.' 'I don't want another ending,' Jacks said flatly. 'I just want you to leave.

[referencing that what bothered her about Hansel and Gretel was the weak willed father who let the evil stepmother send the children into the woods not once but twice, and the unease of children reunited happily with their father] : In many ways that unease has guided me through these stories, that note of trouble that I think many of us hear in familiar tales, because we know - even as children - that impossible tasks are an odd way to choose a spouse, that predators come in many guises, that a prince's whims are often cruel. The more I listened to that note of warning, the more inspiration I found.

Satan has certainly been the best friend the church has ever had, as he has kept it in business all these years. The false doctrine of Hell and the Devil has allowed the Protestant and Catholic Churches to flourish far too long. Without a devil to point their fingers at, religionists of the right hand path would have nothing with which to threaten their followers. "Satan leads you to temptation"; "Satan is the prince of evil"; "Satan is vicious, cruel, brutal," they warn. "If you give in to the temptations of the devil, you will surely suffer eternal damnation and roast in Hell." The semantic meaning of Satan is the "adversary" or "opposition" or the "accuser." The very word "devil" comes from the Indian devi which means "god." Satan represents opposition to all religions which serve to frustrate and condemn man for his natural instincts. He has been given an evil role simply because he represents the carnal, earthly, and mundane aspects of life.

The only person in my head is me. Tibe is not the same. The crown has changed him, as you feared it would. The fire is in him, the fire that will burn all the world. And it is in your son, in the prince who will never change his blood and will never sit a throne. The only person in my head is me. The only person who has not changed is you. You are still the little girl in a dusty room, forgotten, unwanted, out of place. You are the queen of everything, mother to a beautiful son, wife to a king who loves you, and still you cannot find it in yourself to smile. Still you make nothing. Still you are empty. The only person in your head is you. And she is no one of any importance. She is nothing

You think I am so wicked, don't you? A monster. Unnatural. How cruel of me to keep you here and rattle on about my dead grandmother whom you care nothing about. To hold back the doom I keep in store for you and tease you about your mother. I am telling you all this for a reason, you curdle-brained child. Didn't you ever have a tutor? I am teaching dead, dull history—so that you will understand why your feet carried you here instead of towards some other broken old woman's hut, and what you ended when you snapped my daughter's neck. Don't keep looking at me with that same idiot stare. Listen, or you will comprehend nothing, not even your mother. Shall I just kill you now and have my revenge? It would certainly save breath, and at my age every breath is named and numbered. I entertain you at the expense of not a few figures in that scroll of sighs, boy; do not test me." She paused, grimacing as if she truly were tallying the accounts of her lungs. "And never assume that a woman is wicked simply because she is ugly and behaves unfavorably towards you. It is unbecoming behavior for a Prince.

I say that every prince must desire to be considered merciful and not cruel. He must, however, take care not to misuse this mercifulness. … A prince, therefore, must not mind incurring the charge of cruelty for the purpose of keeping his subjects united and confident; for, with a very few examples, he will be more merciful than those who, from excess of tenderness, allow disorders to arise, from whence spring murders and rapine; for these as a rule injure the whole community, while the executions carried out by the prince injure only one individual. And of all princes, it is impossible for a new prince to escape the name of cruel, new states being always full of dangers. … Nevertheless, he must be cautious in believing and acting, and must not inspire fear of his own accord, and must proceed in a temperate manner with prudence and humanity, so that too much confidence does not render him incautious, and too much diffidence does not render him intolerant.

He divided the inhabitants of this world into two groups, into those who had loved and those who had not. It was a horrible aristocracy, apparently, for those who had no capacity for love (or rather for suffering in love) could not be said to be alive and certainly would not live again after their death. They were a kind of straw population, filling the world with their meaningless laughter and tears and chatter and disappearing still lovable and vain into thin air. For this distinction he cultivated his own definition of love that was like no other and that had gathered all its bitterness and pride from his odd life. He regarded love as a sort of cruel malady through which the elect are required to pass in their late youth and from which they emerge, pale and wrung, but ready for the business of living. There was (he believed) a great repertory of errors mercifully impossible to human beings who had recovered from this illness. Unfortunately there remained to them a host of failings, but at least (from among many illustrations) they never mistook a protracted amiability for the whole conduct of life, they never again regarded any human being, from a prince to a servant, as a mechanical object.

Most of all, I hate you because I think of you. Often. It's disgusting, and I can't stop.' I am shocked in to silence. 'Maybe you should shoot me after all,' he says, covering his face with one long-fingered hand. ... He doesn't look up as I walk around the desk to him. I place the tip of the blade against the bottom of his chin, as I did the day before in the hall, and I tilt his face toward mine. He shifts his gaze with obvious reluctance. The horror and shame on his face look entirely too real. Suddenly, I am not so sure what to believe. I lean toward him, close enough for a kiss. His eyes widen. The look in his face is some commingling of panic and desire. It is a heady feeling, having power over someone. Over Cardan, who I never thought had any feelings at all. 'You really do want me,' I say, close enough to feel the warmth of his breath as it hitches. 'And you hate it.' I change the angle of the knife, turning it so it's against his neck. He doesn't look nearly as alarmed by that as I might expect. Not nearly as alarmed as when I bring my mouth to his.

Please, I know you understand heartbreak. Stop Luc from marrying Marisol. Save my heart from breaking again.” “Now, that was a pathetic speech.” Two slow claps followed the indolent voice, which sounded just a few feet away. Evangeline spun around, all the blood draining from her face. She didn’t expect to see him—the young man who’d been tearing his clothes in the back of the church. Although it was difficult to believe this was the same person. She had thought that boy was in agony, but he must have ripped away his pain along with the sleeves of his jacket, which now hung in tatters over a striped black-and-white shirt that was only halfway tucked into his breeches. He sat on the dais steps, lazily leaning against one of the pillars with his long, lean legs stretched out before him. His hair was golden and messy, his too-bright blue eyes were bloodshot, and his mouth twitched at the corner as if he didn’t enjoy much, but he found pleasure in the brief bit of pain he’d just inflicted upon her. He looked bored and rich and cruel. “Would you like me to stand up and turn around so that you can take in the rest of me?” he taunted. The color instantly returned to Evangeline’s cheeks. “We’re in a church.” “What does that have to do with anything?” In one elegant move, the young man reached into the inner pocket of his ripped burgundy coat, pulled out a pure white apple, and took one bite. Dark red juice dripped from the fruit to his long, pale fingers and then onto the pristine marble steps. “Don’t do that!” Evangeline hadn’t meant to yell. Although she wasn’t shy with strangers, she generally avoided quarrelling with them. But she couldn’t seem to help it with this crass young man. “You’re being disrespectful.” “And you’re praying to an immortal who kills every girl he kisses. You really think he deserves any reverence?” The awful young man punctuated his words with another wide bite of his apple.

I put both of my hands on the desk. 'Just tell me why you hate me. Once and for all.' His long fingers smooth over the wood of Dain's desk. 'You really want honesty?' 'I am the one with the crossbow, not shooting you because you promised me answers. What do you think?' 'Very well.' He fixes me with a spiteful look. 'I hate you because your father loves you even though you're a human brat born to his unfaithful wife, while mine never cared for me, though I am a prince of Faerie. I hate you because you don't have a brother who beats you. And I hate you because Locke used you and your sister to make Nicasia cry after he stole her from me. Besides which, after the tournament, Balekin never failed to throw you in my face as the mortal who could best me.' ... 'Is that all?' I demand. 'Because it's ridiculous. You can't be jealous of me. You don't have to live at the sufferance of the same person who murdered your parents. You don't have to stay angry because if you don't, there's a bottomless well of fear ready to open up under you.' I stop speaking abruptly, surprised at myself. I said I wasn't going to be charmed, but I let him trick me in to opening up to him. As I think that, Cardan's smile turns in to a more familiar sneer. 'Oh, really? I don't know about being angry? I don't know about being afraid? You're not the one bargaining for your life.' 'That's really why you hate me?' I demand. 'Only that? There's no better reason?' For a moment, I think he's ignoring me, but then I realise he's not answering me because he can't lie and he doesn't want to tell the truth. 'Well?' I say, lifting the crossbow again, glad to have a reason to reassert my position as the person in charge. 'Tell me!' He leans in and closes his eyes. 'Most of all, I hate you because I think of you. Often. It's disgusting, and I can't stop.' I am shocked in to silence. 'Maybe you should shoot me after all,' he says, covering his face with one long-fingered hand.

Spleen Je suis comme le roi d'un pays pluvieux, Riche, mais impuissant, jeune et pourtant très vieux, Qui, de ses précepteurs méprisant les courbettes, S'ennuie avec ses chiens comme avec d'autres bêtes. Rien ne peut l'égayer, ni gibier, ni faucon, Ni son peuple mourant en face du balcon. Du bouffon favori la grotesque ballade Ne distrait plus le front de ce cruel malade; Son lit fleurdelisé se transforme en tombeau, Et les dames d'atour, pour qui tout prince est beau, Ne savent plus trouver d'impudique toilette Pour tirer un souris de ce jeune squelette. Le savant qui lui fait de l'or n'a jamais pu De son être extirper l'élément corrompu, Et dans ces bains de sang qui des Romains nous viennent, Et dont sur leurs vieux jours les puissants se souviennent, II n'a su réchauffer ce cadavre hébété Où coule au lieu de sang l'eau verte du Léthé // I'm like the king of a rain-country, rich but sterile, young but with an old wolf's itch, one who escapes his tutor's monologues, and kills the day in boredom with his dogs; nothing cheers him, darts, tennis, falconry, his people dying by the balcony; the bawdry of the pet hermaphrodite no longer gets him through a single night; his bed of fleur-de-lys becomes a tomb; even the ladies of the court, for whom all kings are beautiful, cannot put on shameful enough dresses for this skeleton; the scholar who makes his gold cannot invent washes to cleanse the poisoned element; even in baths of blood, Rome's legacy, our tyrants' solace in senility, he cannot warm up his shot corpse, whose food is syrup-green Lethean ooze, not blood. — Robert Lowell, from Marthiel & Jackson Matthews, eds., The Flowers of Evil (NY: New Directions, 1963)

Like Nycteris, she thought, and cringed. There was an old fairy tale called The History of Photogen and Nycteris that she still carried a copy of. The main character in it was a young woman who had been raised by a cruel witch, inside a cave beneath a castle. The girl had grown up knowing only darkness, which at the time hadn’t seemed much of an issue to child-Devon. But the general idea was that Nycteris’s world was narrow: she thought the lamp in her cave was a sun, and that the universe was just a tiny series of rooms. She knew nothing of society and had very few books. A relatable situation, for a book eater woman. One day, Nycteris escaped her cave by following a stray firefly. She ended up in the castle garden. But her reactions in the story were strange and unexpected. Upon espying the moon for the first time, Nycteris decided that it must be a giant lamp, akin to the one in her cave. She saw the sky, and likewise decided it must be another kind of roof. And when she looked at the horizon, she saw not a limitless world, but merely another room, albeit with distant walls. The concept of outside didn’t exist for one such as Nycteris, nor could it ever. Her upbringing had given her such a fixed perspective that, even when encountering something new, she could only process it along the lines already drawn for her. The story’s complexity had baffled Devon as a child, but she understood it well enough now. The truth was, Nycteris never really escaped. Oh, she got a prince and a castle and the cruel witch died at the end. But Nycteris could not ever leave the cave, because the cave was a place in her mind; it was the entire way she thought about reality. Princesses like that couldn’t be rescued.