Penn Cole Quotes

For anyone who has ever been told their spark shouldn’t burn so bright and for all the people who loved them precisely because it did.

That if a man made you doubt whether his love for you would survive anything, he does not deserve you.

For all those caught in the flames, remember that the hottest fires forge the strongest swords.

Burn, my Queen. Glow so bright, the darkness trembles.

Don’t choose a mediocre life for a mediocre man. Go be exceptional. If he’s worth it, he won’t judge you. And if he’s really the one, he’ll come along for the ride.

You think I fear my own death?” he whispered in my ear. “Every day I draw breath is as much a curse as a gift. I’ve been living on borrowed time for longer than you can imagine. If you’re the way my fate finally catches up to me, I can’t fathom a more beautiful end.

Hope without reason is... it’s cruel.

Show me your worst, my darling, and I’ll show you how far my love can go.

For every spark that has lost its light and needs a little help remembering how to glow.

If a kiss is the reward, my Queen, I’ll get on my knees for you whenever you want.

It’s a reminder that no challenge can destroy the parts of us that truly matter. We’re not reborn in the flames. We’re revealed.

Perhaps, for the right person, we endure the pain, because the torture of never having them at all is the more unbearable fate.

Hate is easy—it’s mercy that requires the greater strength.

I am yours, Luther Corbois. Scars and all.

Don’t choose a mediocre life for a mediocre man. Go be exceptional.

Satisfaction is the death of curiosity.

His thumb raked across my lower lip. “I want every breath, every laugh, every tear. Every taste of your mouth, every inch of your skin. I want to kneel at your feet, soaked in the blood of your enemies, then worship your body until you scream my name.” His hands slid to my hips and tugged me closer. “Yes, Diem, I want to serve you—in every way a man can.” I couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe.

Don’t mistake the pain of change for failure.

Let me do this for you,” he begged. “I could hope for no greater death than this.

If you cannot be stronger, be smarter. Choose both your battles and your enemies with care. Know when to flee a fight to win a war.

Embrace your phoenix. Rise from the ashes, and burn bright once more.

I want to burn alive in that fire in your eyes. I want it to melt me down and forge me into the weapon you need me to be. I want to stand by your side for the rest of my life, and I don’t need you to marry me and make me a fucking king to do it.

You saw it too, didn’t you?” I stopped, but I didn’t look back. “Last night,” he said, “right before the roof collapsed. The vision. The battlefield.” I couldn’t move, my body paralyzed, my thoughts stunned to stillness. “What if our story isn’t over, Diem Bellator? What if it’s only beginning?

I feel a brush over my arm where Penn stood just a second ago. It's Knight. And next to Knight stands Vaughn. 'Cole?' Gus twists his lips, glowering. 'What the fuck?' Knight clasps a hand on my shoulder, hitching a shoulder up while lighting a joint. 'The fuck is, you don't fuck with my family and integrity and assume you get out of it in one piece. Or, you know, at all.

You are my Queen, and I am your sword. Point me at your enemies, and watch them fall. Lead this world, Diem, and I will follow you—into war, into death, into the tundra of hell itself.” He took my palm and set it against his chest, just above the patch of unscarred skin that lay beneath his jacket. “You are the fate my heart was spared for. As long as it beats, you will never fight alone.

Don’t worry about it, Queenie. We’ve got your back.

Diem—you’re wearing the Crown. You’ve been selected. You are the new Queen of Lumnos.

But I was made of swinging fists and rash words, my edges too jagged and my temper too hot. Nothing about me was delicate.

You are fearless. You are strong. You do not cower in the faces of gods nor kings. You are fated for greater battles than this, so you do whatever it takes, and you fight like hell.” “I will,” I vowed. “Remember who you are, Diem Bellator.” He clasped the medallion at my neck. “But remember you are a phoenix, too. We do not fear the flames, for the hotter we burn, the higher we fly.

I'm turning my back on Vaughn and Knight without saying goodbye because I know they won't let me go. They'll promise to protect me and fight my battles at school, and a part of me still wants that to happen.

Desire?” He gave a dark, throaty laugh. “Desire is a pathetic word for what I feel for you. I require you. I am sustained by you. You are the flame that fuels my fire. Don’t you dare question that—not for a second.

Everyone says this phoenix represents dying and coming back as something new, but I disagree. I think it’s a symbol of surviving when the world burns down around us. It’s a reminder that no challenge can destroy the parts of us that truly matter. We’re not reborn in the flames. We’re revealed.

Knight and Vaughn are the closest to each other, practically brothers, which is weird because they are also like fire and ice. Vaughn is a crazy artist with psychotic tendencies, and Knight is the definition of a popular jock. One is Edward Scissorhands; the other is Zac Efron's prettier long-lost brother.

He was also dangerously skilled. It seemed all five of his brain cells had been devoted to the art of the fight.

I wonder where she picked up her habit of disappearing on the people who love her with no explanation,” Luther said flatly.

I want every breath, every laugh, every tear. Every taste of your mouth, every inch of your skin.

We never needed to see all of each other to love all of each other.

Survive, my father’s words echoed in my ears. At whatever cost, to whatever end. Survive first, mind the consequences later.

But I didn’t choose to be a healer, nor did I choose to take my mother’s role. And I didn’t want gentle or delicate. I wanted to burn.

He was once again a marble-carved statue—pretty to look at, impossible to know.

Knight is gorgeous, and not only does he know it, but he would also advertise it on a billboard if it were possible.

He traced the edge of my jaw. “Forgive me. They all need to see it.” “See what?” I rasped, barely able to speak. “Who will come for them if they dare to come for you.” Then his lips were on mine.

He threw his head back and laughed. “You’re very cocky for a woman. What is it you think you have that I don’t?” “Knuckles that don’t drag when I walk. The ability to breathe through my nose. A neck.

Prichard's got too much to lose. He can't touch us.' 'Can anyone?' Penn wonders aloud, just as Trent's door opens from the other side. Dean whistles for him to get outside, swinging my baseball bat and parking it over his shoulder. 'Maybe God,' I answer curtly. 'Even that's debatable.' Dean snickers.

I was drowning in this man. From the moment I met him, I had been kicking against the current and holding my breath, struggling to get back to the safe, familiar surface—but every look, every touch, dragged me deeper still. I felt the burning of it in my lungs, as real and visceral as if I were plunging into the Sacred Sea itself. And maybe it made me weak, or a traitor, or a fool, but gods did I want to close my eyes and sink forever.

I’d always been a spitfire, and proud of it. An unbreakable spirit in a world that wanted me to be quiet, small, subservient.

Your Majesty... you are our Crown.

What if our story isn’t over, Diem Bellator? What if it’s only beginning?

You are the fate my heart was spared for. As long as it beats, you will never fight alone.

For every spark that has lost its light

Let me die with the taste of you on my lips.

Harder, Your Highness. Wilst thou give me permission to come, Your Highness? Let me kneel for you and show the Prince’s little prince a good time, Your H—

I used to play a game where I would change the subject and see how long it took him to bring you up. It never took more than three sentences. He had it bad.

She was my constant lantern when, like now, the world was dark and I didm't know which way to go.

You make so many promises, but the only thing I ever really wanted was honesty. And it’s the one thing you still refuse to give.

Strange, how armor could be both a shield and a cage, keeping the arrows out while trapping the monster in.

Does your little tree club even take women as members? I didn’t see any last night.” “My little tree club is run by a woman.

The stories say the goddess Lumnos and her siblings wanted the Descended to protect the mortals.

I am not afraid, Devourer of Crowns. Ravager of Realms. Herald of Vengeance.

He’s gone, she reminded herself. Dead. You killed him. You’re safe, and so is she.

the King of Lumnos was finally, finally dead. Which could only mean one thing... In thirty days, Auralie Bellator was going home.

Because Knight refuses to win the game. Penn is trying to kill Las Juntas' chance to win so he can save me, but Knight doesn't let him because he knows he deserves it.

I would have walked into the flaming heart of the sun itself,” he shot back. “If you are suffering, nothing will keep me from coming to your aid. Least of all something as trivial as death.

Every day I draw breath is as much a curse as a gift. I’ve been living on borrowed time for longer than you can imagine. If you’re the way my fate finally catches up to me, I can’t fathom a more beautiful end.

War is death and misery and sacrifice. War is making choices that will haunt you for the rest of your days. You fight to protect, or to survive, but never for the joy of killing, no matter how brutal your enemy.

To beat your enemy, you have to know your enemy—intimately. And there’s no better place to do that than in their own home.” The calculating tone in his voice sent ice creeping up my spine. He sounded more like a soldier preparing for war than the goofy, carefree friend I’d grown up with. “You’ve been spending too much time around the Commander,” I teased, a little nervously. “Your father didn’t teach me that. Your mother did.

Mom and Dad clap. Bailey jumps up and down. Knight gives us a thumbs-up, and Vaughns rolls his eyes but smiles. Luna, Addy, Harper, and Camilo look at us likek they've won something. Happy in our happiness. And that's what good friends and families do. They pick you up and pull you out of the mud of your own mistakes. And when you're not the best version of yourself? Well, they're still there, waiting, because we're all fucking human.

It’s never the enemy who attacks outright who will strike your killing blow, he’d taught me. It’s the one who hides in the shadows and waits. The one who strikes when you’ve finally looked away. Those are the true predators to fear.

And soft. I was surrounded by softness. A nest of it, tucked into me on all sides. It smelled heavenly. Masculine. Fresh, earthy moss and damp cedar. Old, tanned leather with a peppery musk. It smelled like my beloved forest. It smelled like home.

What if I don’t want to sit back and do nothing anymore?” I said. “What if I want to fight back?” He cupped my face in his hands, his skin rough against my jaw. “I cannot tell you what to do with your life, my darling Diem. But whatever you choose—be smart. And above all, survive. Your life is far too precious to me to be wasted.

I kept the scar as a symbol of that promise.” His focus rose to me. “But you are the woman I pledged myself to. And now, this scar is for you.” He laid his hand over mine to flatten it over the scar’s rippled edge. “Let all those who might try to tear us apart see this and know how far my devotion will go. I will suffer for you, bleed for you, but most of all, I will survive for you. My body can be carved in two, open and dying, and still I will crawl from the ruins of my flesh and fight my way back to your side. Death itself could not keep me away. “My oath to you is written on my skin. Once, that vow was just to serve you.” He brought my hand to his mouth and kissed my knuckles. “Now, it is everything.

In 1970 the Quakers released a slim book entitled “Who Shall Live? Man’s Control over Birth and Death: A Report Prepared for the American Friends Service Committee” which was the result of a decision which the Family Planning Committee of the AFSC reached in December 1966 “to explore the issues involved in abortion.” That meeting in turn flowed from the November 1966 meeting that the AFSC had had with Planned Parenthood, and that meeting resulted from the setback the Quaker and Episcopalian forces for sexual liberation and eugenics in Philadelphia had suffered at the hands of Martin Mullen, when the governor capitulated to his demands and backed away from state-promoted birth control in August of the same year. As a result of their meeting with Planned Parenthood, the Quakers decided to “make a study of the availability of family planning services for medically indigent families in the city and to form an estimate as to the extent of the unmet need for such services. “Who Shall Live” was the fruit of this labor. “Who Shall Live?” is a graphic example of moral theology in the Quaker mode. It begins by announcing that “for 300 years members of the Society of Friends (Quakers) have been seekers after the truth” and concludes by admitting that they have been so far unsuccessful in their efforts. Where once people like Fox and Penn “thought of himself as created only a few thousand years ago,” the enlightened Quakers who wrote birth-control tracts in the 1960s “now know he is part of an evolutionary process that has been going on for billions of years. In that process he has arrived at a stage of knowledge and technology whereby he himself has the power, at least in part, to determine the direction in which he will evolve in the future.” Having decided that their religious forebears were wrong on just about everything because they didn’t understand science, the 1970 Quakers then give some sense of their own grasp of science as it applies to population issues. Looking at the world from outer space in 1968, the Quakers found it “incredible that 3.5 billion people should be living on that small spinning planet.” Taking their cue from Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 book “The Population Bomb” the Quakers concluded quite logically that if the planet cannot sustain 3.5 billion people in 1968, then it certainly couldn’t sustain 6 billion people in the year 2000. Unless drastic population-control measures are introduced immediately, dire consequences will follow. “Lamont C. Cole, who is a Professor of Ecology warns that we may one day find ourselves short of breathable air,” the Quakers announced breathlessly.

Frankly, the fact that your brother’s heart still beats is owed only to his impressive ability to avoid pissing you off.” “Then how are you still alive?” That had definitely been aloud. Luther’s joyless smirk rang with the promise of a battle. It was equal parts thrilling and immensely unnerving. FIGHT.

You could try to look a little less pleased with yourself every time you turn a new member of my family against me. Sorae used to adore me. Now when I use the front entrance, she tries to take a bite out of my arm.

I worked with patients in similar situations. Children hurt by parents, wives hurt by husbands. Sometimes their reactions didn’t make sense to me. Sometimes it even made me angry. Wounds take many forms, and not all of them are physical. Healing from a trauma like that can be...” I sighed sadly. “...complicated.

Blood.

You’re very cocky for a woman. What is it you think you have that I don’t?” “Knuckles that don’t drag when I walk. The ability to breathe through my nose. A neck.

I don’t just want a piece of you—I want them all.” His thumb raked across my lower lip. “I want every breath, every laugh, every tear. Every taste of your mouth, every inch of your skin. I want to kneel at your feet, soaked in the blood of your enemies, then worship your body until you scream my name.” His hands slid to my hips and tugged me closer. “Yes, Diem, I want to serve you—in every way a man can.

As so often happens with a parent’s hope-filled dreams for their children, things did not go exactly to plan.

Happy reading, dear,” she chirped, strolling away. “And don’t forget why they banned these books for mortals in the first place.” “Why is that?” “Because an education is the most powerful weapon of them all.

Show me your worst, my darling, and I'll show you how far my love can go.

When he didn’t answer, I lifted my eyes to his—a critical mistake. The depth of the emotion I saw there crested over me and pulled me out with the tide. I was drowning in this man. From the moment I met him, I had been kicking against the current and holding my breath, struggling to get back to the safe, familiar surface—but every look, every touch, dragged me deeper still. I felt the burning of it in my lungs, as real and visceral as if I were plunging into the Sacred Sea itself.

Every person in this room wants something from you,” he said after a heavy pause. “They look at you, and they see the things they want to take. I know, because I lived it. From the moment I became heir, everyone wanted to be either my friend or my lover. When you took the Crown, I swore to be different—to serve your goals, not mine. I told myself that even if you had no one else, you would at least have me. I never wanted to become just another person who wanted to steal a piece of you for themselves.

I want every breath, every laugh, every tear. Every taste of your mouth, every inch of your skin. I want to kneel at your feet, soaked in the blood of your enemies, then worship your body until you scream my name.

I pledged you my loyalty, and you have it, no matter your choice. But I cannot keep lying to you or to myself. I want all of you, Diem.” His lips brushed against mine, his words breathing straight into my lungs. “You already have all of me.

It felt as if something in him had hooked itself on something in me.

A fragment of memory ripped through me. A man, standing outside the healers’ center, his profile softly lit by the glow of a lantern. Not a patient—a visitor. Whispering with my mother.

Montios governs itself differently from the other realms. Here, it is our Council, not our Crown, that makes decisions for our realm. The Crown is a member of the Council, but the rest of us are chosen by the people of Montios. If we cannot come to an agreement, the Crown’s will is decisive. Otherwise, they have only one vote, the same as each of us here.

You’ll stay with her until I’m back?” “Lumnos herself couldn’t pull me from her side.” More silence. “Cousin... who is this woman to you?” A pause, and a long, heavy sigh. “Eleanor, I... I think she...

A bright light and a heavy pain at my temples—not an injury from the bomb’s blast, I realized now, but the onset of a new Crown. That’s why my Crown had looked different, felt different. The Arboros Guardians hadn’t been familiar enough with the Crown of Lumnos to know, but Luther and the others had.

My gaze rose slowly to the Councilors. “I will help you however I can, but I have to ask... why are you telling me this?” Hepta’s head cocked, the creased lines of her aging face becoming more prominent with her frown. “I don’t understand what you mean.” “Why save me and bring me here? What is it your Crown wants from me?” “Your Majesty... you are our Crown.

The light at the center dimmed, then took the form of a man, his back turned to me. He stiffened, his shoulders rolling. His head turned slightly, revealing the hint of a cold smile. Slowly, he turned, and I sucked in a gasp. I’d only ever seen him from afar in my visions, but now, it was as if he was right before me, standing in my presence and staring directly into my eyes. My dark grey eyes—just like his.

Second, a message from the Blessed Mother. I know not what it means, only that it is essential you heed these lines: Eleven must fall for one to rise. Share the gift to pay the cost. A dying star will rekindle the spark. What is forgotten is not lost. Remember my sister’s words. Beware my brother’s wrath. Good luck, Daughter of the Forgotten. May you strive to seek virtue in all things.

Using your magic in tandem like that is a very rare skill. Are you family?

But for now...” She reached across me to grab a trio of bottles by their necks, then tapped me on the nose. “I’m going to enjoy this evening like it’s my last.

If it was Blessed Lumnos, maybe her Crown is the gift,” Taran said. “More like a curse,” I muttered. “And if she wants me to give it away, I apparently have to die first. Whoever her faithful heir is, he can wait his turn. I didn’t survive the Challenging just to give my life up for some prophecy.

What do you want, Luther?” His eyes dragged slowly to me. He held me there like a butterfly cupped between his hands, fluttering against his touch and wondering if he would be my doom. Every hair on my neck stood on end as he turned his lips to my ear, his voice low and rough. “Something I cannot have.

Eleanor shot a nervous glance at Taran, her voice hushing. “When his sons were young, they would often show up at school with lashes or burns. Very often. Rumor is the King spoke with Garath and made it stop, although...” She chewed on her lip. “That was when their healing abilities began, so no one knew for sure.” I eyed Aemonn and Taran. Both were staring anywhere but their father, looking miserable and exposed.

He hesitated. “I saw the Ignios gryvern a few times while in the army. He’s a mean, nasty brute.” Sorae let out the faintest whine, and an odd pulse of emotion I didn’t understand came across the bond she and I shared. I walked over and itched the underside of her chin.

And I have failed. Completely, irreversibly failed. I don’t just want a piece of you—I want them all.” His thumb raked across my lower lip. “I want every breath, every laugh, every tear. Every taste of your mouth, every inch of your skin. I want to kneel at your feet, soaked in the blood of your enemies, then worship your body until you scream my name.” His hands slid to my hips and tugged me closer. “Yes, Diem, I want to serve you—in every way a man can.” I couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe. “I want to burn alive in that fire in your eyes. I want it to melt me down and forge me into the weapon you need me to be. I want to stand by your side for the rest of my life, and I don’t need you to marry me and make me a fucking king to do it.