Carry On

A house built around the one thing that could kill you.

The first things I notice are the two walls of windows, which is exactly what Father wants. Every Human I’ve talked with assumes that Vampyres hate light and relish darkness, but they couldn’t be more wrong. The sun may be forbidden to us, toxic always and deathly in large quantities, but that’s precisely why we covet it with such intensity. Windows are a luxury, because they need to be treated with absurdly expensive materials that filter everything that might harm us. And windows this large are the most bombastic of status symbols, in a full display of dynastic power and obscene wealth.

Bride · Ali Hazelwood

The nights you swear you'll never forget, and how quietly they go.

Nobody tells you how those nights that stand out in your memory—levee sunset nights, hurricane nights, first kiss nights, homesick sleepover nights, nights when you stood at your bedroom window and looked at the lilies one porch over and thought they would stand out, singular and crystallized, in your memory forever—they aren’t really anything. They’re everything, and they’re nothing. They make you who you are, and they happen at the same time a twenty-three-year-old a million miles away is warming up some leftovers, turning in early, switching off the lamp. They’re so easy to lose.

One Last Stop · Casey McQuiston

Desire that arrives as need, not want.

I need to feel your lips on mine.“ He planted his hands on the carriage wall, caging me in. ”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?

A Kingdom of Flesh and Fire · Jennifer L. Armentrout