Let's get this straight...

- john keats, excerpt from a letter to fanny brawne

Kaz remembered her perched on the sill of his attic window, sometime during that first year after he’d brought her into the Dregs. She’d been feeding the crows that congregated on the roof.

“You shouldn’t make friends with crows,” he’d told her.

”Why not?” she asked.

He’d looked up from his desk to answer, but whatever he’d been about to say had vanished on his tongue.

The sun was out for once, and Inej had turned her face to it. Her eyes were shut, her oil-black lashes fanned over her cheeks. The harbour wind had lifted her dark hair, and for a moment Kaz was a boy again, sure that there was magic in this world.

He didn’t mean to say it. He meant to let her go. “I can help you.” Her gaze snapped to his in the mirror, wary as if gauging an opponent. I can help you. They were the first words she’d spoken to him, standing in the parlor of the Menagerie, draped in purple silk, eyes lined in kohl. She had helped him. And she’d nearly destroyed him. Maybe he should let her finish the job. Kaz could hear the drip of the faucet, water striking the basin in an uneven rhythm. He wasn’t sure what he wanted her to say. Tell her to get out, a voice inside him demanded. Beg her to stay.                   - Crooked Kingdom, CHAPTER 26

“Stop punishing yourself for being someone with a heart. You cannot protect yourself from suffering. To live is to grieve. You are not protecting yourself by shutting yourself off from the world. You are limiting yourself.”

engagement portrait, 1923.

― Sophie Kinsella