A Tempest of Tea

Why save the world when you can have tea?!

Aren’t you afraid?” she asked. “Fear stops life, not death,

Family isn't who we live with but those we would die for.

That was the nature of man; born to nurture, determined to destroy

Every good love story starts with a bullet to the heart.

Let me bleed for you.

Ignorance had always been a defining feature of the privileged.

One gets a taste for blood when you have to lick your own wounds.

What is a monster if not a man pushed to the brink?

mortui vivos docent. The dead teach the living.

Touch her and, and you all will die, have I made myself clear?

You know, darling, not everyone needs to be threatened to work for you. It’s possible for someone to simply want to.

The dark is no place for a dove.

Death bleeds red no matter of the color of one's skin.

If he rubbed at his soul hard enough to get past the grime of the streets, he might even find optimism.

Waiting on you, habibti,” he called as she started down the stairs. She didn’t know what that meant and didn’t want to ask. It was likely an insult.

He sighed but lifted his right hand and knocked the back of it against the back of hers, their knuckles rapping. "We were made for trouble, you and me.

she didn't abide by the law so much as she bent it. She didn't carry a weapon so much as her defiance - and weren't they one and the same?

I wish I could say it was a pleasure, but I'm not one to lie.

We don't do the worrying. We create it.

It was hard to believe in fairy tales when she'd lived a nightmare.

It was hard not to watch Arthie Casimir. The way she worked and schemed, at times as still as stone, other times as restless as a bee. For the most part, Arthie obscured her femininity. She was, after all, a girl in a man’s world, but it snuck through every once in a while. When she turned a certain way. When she lit up at Jin’s words or countered Matteo’s provocations or slid a glance at Laith. When the waves of her hair caught the light, illuminating the copper of her skin and making her gaze come alive with mischief.

You need to leave", she whispered. "Before...before-" "No", he whispered back. "Destroy me.

There was good sense, and then there was affluence.

I know a helpless soul when I see one.

Say it again.” He crooked a lazy grin. “Really, Felicit—” “No. Not the name she gave me. The name I made for myself.

He was looking at her as if there were no angry, violent men before him. As if it was only the two of them in the world. “Did he hurt you?” Flick didn’t know how to respond to the pure fury in his eyes. “Did he touch you?” Jin asked again. She shook her head.

She had always believed there was something beautiful in the way a fire could start from nothing and rise into a beast. It told her that anything was possible. It told her that no matter how dark the world might be, all it needed was a spark.