But because I am selfish, weak, and afraid. I can’t be alone with myself, not now, not yet. So I sit, and I listen, and I watch. And through it all, I feel his eyes.

With that one gesture he changed my future, and destroyed his own.

She looked to the roses, but it was Tibe's face she saw. It was familiar now, after months of friendship. She knew his nose, his lips, his jaw, his eyes most of all. They stirred something in her, a connection she did not know she could make with another person. She saw herself in them, her own pain, her own joy. We are the same, she thought. Searching for something to keep us anchored, both alone in a crowded room.

Even without her lightning, Mare Barrow still manages to strike me through.

My skin burs under Maven's gaze, with the memory of one stolen kiss. It was him who saved me from Evangeline. Cal who saved me from escaping and bringing more pain upon myself. Cal who saved me from conscription. I've been too busy trying to save others to notice how much Cal saves me. How much he loves me.

I am afraid of waking up to emptiness, to a place where my friends and family are gone and I am nothing but a single bolt of lightning in the blackness of a lonely storm. If I am a sword, I am a sword made of glass, and I feel myself beginning to shatter.

I suppose I should get used to being alone too. Not in the world, but in here. In my heart.

I must freeze my heart to the one person who insists on setting it ablaze.

I wold never call loving someone else a weakness. I think living without love at all, any kind of love, is weakness. And the worst kind of darkness.