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“‘You’re important to me, Poppy. Not because you’re the Maiden, but because you’re…you.’”

“Hawke wasn’t the catalyst. He was the reward.”

A KINGDOM OF FLESH AND FIRE

“‘Your heart, Poppy? It is a gift I do not deserve. But it is one I will protect until my dying breath.’”

“‘The world, no matter how big, is often smaller than we realize.’”

“‘You don’t deserve everything that I’ve laid at your feet, and you sure as hell don’t deserve the fact that I’m still trying to hold onto you. That when it comes time for you to leave, I’m still going to want you. Even when you inevitably do leave, I’ll still want you.’”

“‘I don’t want to pretend. I’m Poppy and you’re Casteel, and this is real.’”

“He was the first thing I’d ever truly chosen for myself.”

“‘Let’s make a deal that we don’t borrow tomorrow’s problems today.’”

“‘Always. Your heart was always safe with me. It always will be. There is nothing I will protect more fiercely or with more devotion, Poppy. Trust in that—in what you feel from me.’”

“‘You can’t spell dysfunctional without fun, now can you?’”

“‘I fell for you when you were Hawke, and I kept falling for you when you became Casteel.’”

“‘But even so, sometimes, the heartbreak that comes with loving someone is worth it, even if loving that person means eventually saying goodbye to them.’”

“He was both the villain and the hero, the monster and the monster-slayer.”

“‘I need to feel your lips on mine. I need to feel your breath in my lungs. I need to feel your life inside me. I just need you. It’s an ache. This need. Can I have you? All of you?’”

“‘You’re beautiful when you’re quiet and somber, but when you laugh? You rival the sunrise over the Skotos Mountains.’”

“‘Dear gods, you have her on her own horse? Soon, she’ll be running one of us over instead of stabbing us.’”

“‘There is no side of you that is not as beautiful as the other half. Not a single inch isn’t stunning. That was true the first time I said it to you, and it is still the truth today and tomorrow.’”

“He had my whole heart, and he had from the moment he allowed me to protect myself, from the moment he stood beside me instead of in front of me.”

“‘A cell is a cell, no matter how comfortable it is.’”

“Feelings were not stagnant. Neither were opinions or beliefs, and if we stopped believing people were capable of change, then the world might as well be left to burn.”

“‘I don’t know what you want from me.’”…“‘Everything. I want everything.’”

“‘When it comes to bacon, the answer is always yes.’”

“’But I was once told that the best relationships are the ones where passions run high.’”

“‘Beauty, my sweet child, is often broken and barbed, and always unexpected.’”

“‘Change can be good just as much as it can be bad.’”

“‘Thank you.’”…“‘For what?’”…“‘For choosing me.’”

“And kissing Casteel was like daring to kiss the sun.”

A CROWN OF GILDED BONES

“‘You will bow before your Queen. Or you will bleed before her. It is your choice.’”