“His eyes blazed at me, but it was the best kind of heat. He smiled, and for the first time in my life I believed that, for him, I could be more than I’d ever dreamed.”
― Garrett Leigh, quote from Slide
“I wanted to wrap my bones around him and never let go.”
― Garrett Leigh, quote from Slide
“Ash only had one tattoo on his body--the wizard he'd etched on himself. From whatever angle I looked, it seemed like its throat had been cut.”
― Garrett Leigh, quote from Slide
“For the first time in my life, home was where my heart was, and I'd left my heart in Chicago.”
― Garrett Leigh, quote from Slide
“You know you’re loudest when you don’t say anything at all?”
― Garrett Leigh, quote from Slide
“Steldor, maybe you could try to deter your father, you know, from making arrangements for me so soon. Would another year or two really matter?”
He responded with a dry laugh. “Deter my father? Shaselle, trying to deter my father once he’s made up his mind is like yelling whoa at a stampede of wild horses.”
“Doesn’t stop you,” I muttered, crossing my arms with a huff.
Again that cynical chuckle. “I assure you, it does.”
“No, it doesn’t.” I pushed off the rough stone to stare at him. Annoyance came to me ever more quickly these days, and now the disagreeable temperament my mother and older sister condemned was emerging. I pointed back up the road. “Explain that scarecrow to me, if you’re so obedient! I know your father was upset with you after you posted your rules, but you went ahead anyway, without his blessing.”
Steldor clamped a hand over my mouth, the other holding the back of my neck, then he leaned close to hiss, “I’d prefer if my involvement in both of those incidents remained undisclosed.”
My cheeks burned, and I pushed his hands away. “Sorry. That was stupid. But isn’t there anything you can do? You have the captain’s ear.”
“What I have is his attention,” he corrected, having accepted my apology and brushed aside our tense exchange. “Not intentionally, mind you, but I’ll be keeping it over the next few weeks. He’ll probably be distracted from you anyway.”
“You’re planning another stunt?”
He winked. “Would you expect anything less of Galen and me?”
“Can I help you?”
The up-and-down nature of our conversation persisted, and he shook his head vehemently.
“This is dangerous, what we’ve been doing. We laugh, but these aren’t games. If we’re caught, we’ll be arrested. There’s a reason my father disapproves, in spite of his own ambitions.” He let his rebuff hang in the hot air while I again felt color rising in my cheeks. “Just go home, Shaselle. Put on a dress. Be a lady, and stay out of trouble. Understand?”
“I hate them, too, you know,” I said, his dismissal and the humiliation that came with it rankling me. “It’s not just your homeland that the Cokyrians have sullied--it’s my homeland, too. And those bastards killed my father.”
“And bitches,” he added, catching me off guard. “Wouldn’t want to forget the women.”
I didn’t know how to respond, so I gaped at him foolishly until he stepped onto the cobblestone of the thoroughfare.
“Come on. Let me take you home.”
We walked in silence back to the western residential area where I lived, though he stopped at the beginning of my street to let me traverse the rest of the distance by myself.
“I shouldn’t be seen around here. Not where Galen’s assigned--the Cokyrians are trying to keep us apart to avoid plots big and small, and will be suspicious if we’re seen in the same area.”
I nodded and turned to go, but he grabbed my arm.
“I know how you feel, Shaselle. I know you want to do something, and it’s not even that I don’t think you could. I just can’t let you be involved, for the sake of your safety. And mine,” he added as an afterthought. “My father would kill me if I let you help and you came to harm. Just please, let this go, and I swear I’ll do my best to influence him on your marriage issue.”
Now that I was thinking rationally, offering my assistance had been absurd--I had no special skills aside from horseback riding, and certainly no military training , so accepting Steldor’s offered compromise was not difficult.”
― Cayla Kluver, quote from Sacrifice
“If there were no goodness in people, mankind would still be confined to loping across a Savannah somewhere on Earth, watching the elephants rule, or some other more compassionate species.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from The Worthing Saga
“Now it's going to turn into the biggest media blitz since the Pope's divorce.”
― Dani Kollin, quote from The Unincorporated Man
“I felt once again the unease of arriving at night in an unknown city--that faint sour panic which seems to cling to a place until one has found oneself a bed.”
― Laurie Lee, quote from As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning
“What in me is dark Illumine, what is low raise and support; That to the highth of this great Argument I may assert th’ Eternal Providence, And justifie the wayes of God to men.”
― John Milton, quote from Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained
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