63 Quotes by V.S. Carnes

Kent steepled his fingers in consideration. Blood-red rubies flashed in the sunlight, like the eyes of a demon clutched in his hands.

He squinted at her. He recalled the tears in her eyes that had not fallen into her teacup. No, it wasn’t a revelation. Not even to him. Yet, this was the same woman who had stolen a camel right out from under the Anti-Zionist army’s nose. She’d taken his hand, thrown herself down a sand dune on a dare, and then beaten him back up it. She’d glared at him and refused to part from his side. A coward? “Never,” he said again.

She’d said she loved him. She'd put that impossible, unimaginably beautiful gift in his hands and he’d thrown it back at her. To save her. To save himself.

It came as naturally to him as breathing or lying, or worse. His mama had only taught her son to be cautious at all times. Garnette was more than that. Much, much more than that.

After all, you are a hero and everything.

She was a little thing, too, inciting that basic compulsion in him as a man to protect her in so hectic a place as post-war Israel. Even so, his actions were borne out of an entirely different instinct, altogether: to fool her and anyone within a dart’s range... to protect himself.

I’ve crossed a world of sand and tears in search of you.

She was an extension of his dreams. A sprinkling of magic dust, of unfeasible wishes, on his stable existence. The one thing-the one bright, marvelous thing-he wanted more than the world, but didn’t deserve. However much he was tortured for her sake, however much blood he had spilled to protect her, the bruises to his body and the thrashings to his sanity, it would never be enough to make a wretch like him worthy of such a miracle.

It was a question of insurmountable proportions. A single word that held every fear he had ever had-and every wish he had ever made on those cursed stars. She needn’t say more. In a single syllable, she had said more than he wanted to hear in an entire lifetime.