Nenia Campbell

“I am the rightful ruler of this world And now that I, too, have awakened, like my dragons, I have come to take back what is mine.”

“Everyone needs to escape sometimes, and retreating into somebody else's fantasy isn't nearly as satisfying as slipping into your own.”

“She had come into the garden expecting summer roses and had instead been caught in a bank of twisted, thorny, frostbitten vines.”

“I want to be your last thought at night, and your first taste at dawn.”

“Fire and water, logic and reason—those footholds of reality that you mortals hold so near and dear become like so much mist on the plains of the dreamscape.”

“They said the shape-shifters fucked with the enthusiasm of animals—if they didn't devour you with the enthusiasm of one first.”

“Death was not the scariest thing out there; no, the denial of it could be far worse.”

“You wanted to see me, Professor?”

“Subjugation requires vigilance; if you relax your brutality even for a moment, the people you're oppressing will revolt at the first sign of weakness. That's why dictatorial regimes are always a slippery slope of cruelty doomed to end in failure.”

“As if I'd had time to drug it in the two milliseconds she'd let me out of her sight.”

“If the whole world seems like it's against you, it helps to know that you've still got home. A safe place. It just takes one person—a teacher, a friend, a parent. If I didn't have you and Dad, if you hadn't made it so clear you loved me as much as you did, or if you'd said, 'yeah, why don't you do it, and put yourself out of our misery, just shut up,' I would have killed myself. I really would have. I spent most of those days wishing I were dead anyway, and what always stopped me was the fact that doing so would destroy the lives of the only people who ever cared about me.”

“Such a dark green, his eyes. They reminded her of the forest, of all the dangers lying dormant behind that verdant cloak of leaves.”

“You are the playground of which I have free reign.”

“Understanding did not provide solace or make the pain go away; in many ways, understanding was just more salt in the emotional wound. Ignorance allowed one to fight back with unfettered cruelty. Understanding inspired empathy, which led to guilt, as well as suffering.She looked at Gavin, supine, unconcerned, contented, and thought that perhaps there was something to being a sociopath. If you didn't have a heart, it couldn't be broken.”

“She seemed like the kind of woman who would fall in love with the sky.”

“You are fifty different kinds of twisted.""Only fifty? Val, you wound me.”

“Why did this keep happening? Why her? Perhaps there was some pheromone certain people omitted, perceivable only on a wavelength unique to those individuals who preyed on them.”

“There was something delightfully intimate about the relationship between predator and prey.”

“It wasn't that she was sad—sadness had very little to do with it, really, considering that most of the time, she felt close to nothing at all. Feeling required nerves, connections, sensory input. The only thing she felt was numb. And tired. Yes, she very frequently felt tired.”