"I loved her with a devotion that outlasted kingdoms, that eclipsed stars, that devoured time. No curse could sever it. No death could dull it. No blade, no betrayal, no cruel hand of a god could reach the place where it lived in me."

"I am tired, my love. Tired in bone and blood. Tired in ways the living are not meant to endure. This is not the kind of tiredness a night of sleep can mend. It lives in me. It follows me. Some mornings it wakes before I do, settled deep in my chest. I carry it everywhere, and some days I cannot remember moving without its weight. It is only a matter of time before it brings me to my knees."

“I was a shape in the dark water, too fleeting for the human eye to claim. I was a rumor passed from ship to ship, a tale that grew teeth in the telling. I was the breath of the tide against the wood, the almost-sound that sent a superstitious man to the rail. The whisper in his ear that told him to look—just once. And when he did, the black sea rose to meet him."

“I did not know then what it meant to love someone. But something began in me that night. Long before I had the sense to call it love, something in me had already turned toward you, as if you were a star yourself and I a sailor destined to spend his life orienting myself by your light."

“I hope the gods know they have made an enemy of me. I hope every curse I have cast into the wind has reached their immortal ears. Let them look down from their distant thrones and see me, small and mortal, burning with a fury they never thought a human heart could hold. Let them see the truth of me: that my love for you and my loathing for them rise from the same inexhaustible place, one they cannot touch or tame."

"I envy that he can stand beneath this same sky and see only stars, while I look up and see only you. To him, the heavens are whole. To me, they are a map of everything I have lost."