The Iron Thorn

Crows don’t take from you,” Dean said. “They give your soul wings.

A touch of truth makes a lie worth believing.

Impossible just means they ain't thought of a name for it yet....

I don't care about lasting. I just want right now.

Dean flashed me a smile that promised rule-breaking and breathlessness.

Word of advice, kid. This may be the Wild West down here, but you ain't a cowboy. You're not even a boy in a cowboy suit.

... I'll be back before I have to meet the Headmaster about me going mad and killing people on my birthday, I swear.

He's no kind of gentleman. That's all right. I'm no kind of lady.

You can't give up on me. If you give up, then I'm going to break into a million pieces. I'm here. I'll give you everything I've got.

I breathed in for a moment, letting his scent of leather and cigarettes and boy calm my ragged breathing.

You're a monster that mothers threaten children with and you're still touchy as an ugly girl in a pretty dress.

...I wondered if I'd ever stop feeling fragile...

When a court officer suggested quarantine for Nerissa, she grabbed the man's pen and jammed it into the back of his hand, screaming that he was a Crimson Guard witch come to remove her memories and replace them with bird-song. They decided to skip quarantine after that.

Considering it was my father's house, I thought it was very much my beeswax, but I wasn't about to argue with a stranger hiding in a kitchen, pelting me with footwear.

Pain was tertiary. I could feel it later, for any length of time it desired.

You smell pretty tasty. Just what every girl wants to hear.

There are seventeen madhouses in the city of Lovecraft. I've visited all of them.

Hell, Cal. You're a monster that mothers threaten their children with and you're still as touchy as an ugly girl in a pretty dress.

I fear, in my dark hours, that it hungers for me and that it is only a matter of time before it eats its full of my sanity.

It wasn't even a dream, because dreams come from a person's brain and I knew deep down that this one came directly from my madness.

Now the Night Bridge has seen you, too, and if you turned back, it could keep your soul forever.

Fine job, cowboy. You work to be this stupid, or is it innate?

We fight and we bleed for this hidden world, and the world eats us alive.