205 Quotes by Sarah Monette

Malkar’s suite was in the part of the Mirador called Fra Barbarossa, still lavish with the tastes of long-dead Ophidian kings. The walls were faced with white marble and hung with gold brocade. Statues of ancient heroes stood in niches, watching me with painted eyes. I knew all their names, all their histories, and their very indifference woke me, alarmed me, and I was caught frozen, able to neither walk forward into Hell nor to turn and walk away.

I had been addicted to phoenix six years ago, just as I had been addicted to Malkar. I had beaten the addiction and not taken phoenix since. I was horrified by how comforting the taste was. I had known people in Pharaohlight, who had insisted that phoenix was tasteless, but they were wrong. It tasted like tears.

Malkar laughed, the low, purring chuckle that I had once thought wonderful, and leaned over to kiss me, pressing his mouth against mine. The familarity of his mouth, of the situation, was itself erotic, a groove worn by the patterns of the past; I could feel my body wanting to respond to it.

His look was predatory, gloating. All the power in this room was his, and he knew it.

It was starting to scare me a little, how easy I could read his face and what he did and didn’t say. That ain’t the same as being able to handle him, and I wasn’t even pretending I had any kind of grip on what he might do when he was topside, but I was getting to where I knew his madness like it was an old friend.

He gave me a look, indecipherable as all Mildmay’s looks were.

I watched him, trying to decide if he was lying about how badly he was hurt, and suddenly like throwing open a pair of shutters, I saw the muscles of his back moving beneath his skin, the strength of his shoulders, the long-fingered grace of his hands. I had always known that Mildmay, despite being a good half foot shorter than I, was as muscular and agile as an acrobat, but now I saw that he was beautiful.

He wasn’t talking to me; he sounded like somebody reciting a poem, and his eyes were wide and dreaming and stark barking mad.

She is the goddess of death, despair, stagnation, abandoned places. They say she is the only god who will protect them now, but they cannot reach her without a maze.