Alice placed her trembling hand atop Rhæna’s, marveling at how well they fit; how surely they belonged. It was almost as if they were the same person—one heart, one mind, one body to shelter them both in warmth; against the cold, against the world. A beautiful monster born from something as pure as love, that existed in serenity.

But the question always snuck up on her whenever it could, between comfortable, drawn-out moments of silence, through the breaking of dawn when they were gallantly trying to stay up to catch a glimpse of the sunrise, or through their watered down smiles and hands clutching wine glasses, yearning desperately for a quick abandonment of their too-sharp, too-stark minds.

Delight, pain, agony, ecstasy, rapture, woe—what curious things.He made himself promise to never ignore them again.

Love is not weakness, father: it is strength. Love is what taught my skin to feel and my eyes to see. Love is not a weapon: it is light.

Oscar squeezed his hand softly. 'Do we really need to know? Can we truly know? Perhaps this whirlwind we call our lives is too big and too vast to be known by our small minds? Perhaps our purpose is not to know, but to be okay with that, to be comfortable with not knowing, and still have the courage to love

All my life my heart has sought a thing I cannot name,' the silver boy said, eyes dancing over the horizon. 'But now that I have found it, I am not so sure I can handle knowing it.

She had rosemary in her hair and stardust on her cheeks, and she was a mess of beautiful chaos, and Rhæna loved her more than life.

There was something beautiful about his scars, something lovely about his fallibility.

A realization struck her: I can only see her. The world is filled with her alone.