Sarah Blakley-Cartwright Quotes

If the innocent are unjust, I'd rather be counted among the guilty.
-Valerie

but she never asked because something so wonderful should never be explained

How much simpler it would have been to become a beast than to live through this, Valerie thought.

Though Valerie and Peter were dancing differently, their bodies moving in different ways, they were both doing the same dance. It was a jealousy dance, old as the human race

Take it easy, friend," siad Peter, regaining his balance, quickly understanding the condition Henry was in.
"Friend? You left us. In the caves." Henry's muscles tensed.
Peter stepped back cautiously. Henry didn't look like himself.
"Seems someone can't hold his drink," Peter said. He didn't go further, sensing then that Valerie might be thinking of her father.
"And now," Henry continued on his own track, stepping closer to meet him, the smell of alcohol on his breath, "my father, too is dead."
Valerie moved to Henry. "Please, don't do this," she said, stepping in. "It's not worth it."
Henry pushed past her, not realizing his own weight. The force knocked her back. Peter grabbed Henry's arm and twisted it. Overreacting, Henry reared back his fist and landed a punch in the hollow of Peter's eye. The crowd laughed as Peter fell hard to the ground.
Henry scrambled on top him, held him by the collar, forced Peter to face him as he'd never done. He looked into the eyes of the man he wanted to blame for his parents' deaths, because it was a shelter from the terrible thought that everything could be lost to a simple slip of fate. "You filth," he spat out.
This really got the villagers going. But Peter didn't laugh. He pulled a knife from his boot and leapt up, thrusting it viciously in Henry's face.
"Keep your hands off her or I'll cut them off!

The wolf lives right here. In this village". He looked at the villages. "Among you. It is one of you.

He had held out shakily, like a tree that had been hacked down to its breaking point. But that kiss was the last swing, the final impact, and he gave in finally, felled.

She never even told me how she felt," Valerie thought aloud, feeling the betrayal in her gut. How had she been so blind? Her sister had loved Henry silently. Did she know about the engagement? Did she overhear our parents planning? Valerie supposed it was possible, but it seemed unlikely since they were always together. Would it have broken her heart?
"Don't worry, you poor child," Madame Lazar said, seeming almost disinterested in the subject of Lucie's death. "I know you're worried about your sister, but Henry always had his eye on you. You are - were always the pretty one.

She never worried about falling; such a thing was never possible in this weightless world

Peter?"
He couldn't look at her. Instead, he stared down at his
poisoned arm.
"I could do terrible things to you," he cautioned her
sadly. "I have to leave you. You won't be safe with me until
I learn to control myself."
"I'll wait for you."
Finally, when he felt the strength of his conviction, of
her conviction, he turned to her, allowing her in for just a
moment.
"I thought you'd say that.

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Valerie, I love you so much. I wanted you to have a normal
childhood - so I lived a double life. Hiding in plain
sight. Living modestly." He began to pace the room, the
words tumbling out of him. "I tried to keep it up, but I've
been so disrespected. Even by my own wife. I couldn't do it
anymore. I've settled for far less than I deserved, and I just
couldn't do it anymore. I decided it was time to leave for
the city....For richer hunting grounds." Cesaire was snarling
now, a scary, powerful force. Valerie felt herself being
drawn to it....
She took a deep, steadying breath. It was not just fear
that she felt. What she felt was so much more complex
than that, something she couldn't understand. "Then why
didn't you just go?"
"Because I loved you girls, and I wanted you to come
with me. To share the wealth."
"But you had to wait until the blood moon.

Dong.
Dong.
Dong.
The third toll of the church bells hovered in the air, and everything became still. Someone in the village had died. Valerie froze.
Dong.
A forth toll shattered the silence. The world split open, exposing a raw inside.
Valerie and Peter looked at each other first in confusion, then in awful understanding.
The fourth bell meant only one thing: Wolf attack.
She had never heard the fourth bell except for the time she and Peter had rung it themselves.
With those bells, Valerie knew.
Life would never be the same,

You've been betrothed."
Her hand dropped from the unruly seam at her shoulder. She stared straight ahead at his sun-touched skin.
"To...Henry Lazar." It wasn't easy for him to say the name.
Valerie felt something fall to the floor of her stomach like a wet rag.
"No," she said, not wanting to believe him. "No, no," she told his chest.
Peter stood mute, wishing he could tell her what she wanted to hear.
"It's not possible," she said.
"It is. I'm telling you, it's done.

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If you're the wolf, though, I'll chop off your head and piss down the hole

How strange to have a sister, Valarie thought. Someone you might have been.

What was that about?" Henry's voice came out higher than he would have liked.
"Shh." Peter's eyes shifted around the square.
"I thought you cared about her," Henry said, careful to steady his voice this time.
Peter rubbed his eyes and hen opened them, hoping to find that Henry had gone. He hadn't.
"I do care." Peter sighed, seeing that we would have to give a genuine answer, that Henry wouldn't take anything less. "But" - Peter nodded in the direction of the tavern, where the Captain was - "I'm trying to be smart about it.

His memory loved her too much.