Home > Author > Jennifer Giesbrecht
21 " We move through cycles that grow shorter with each rotation (...) First is creation; then we prosper; then we preserve. Then, decline. Finally, decay.The last cycle is a corrupted world, so far from the light. When this cycle collapses, the world folds in on itself. An then, we begin again. "
― Jennifer Giesbrecht , The Monster of Elendhaven
22 " I want to know everything Grandmother won’t talk about. If you walk into dark places, I want to be with you. If I die”—she took a deep breath—“throw me into the sea, Florian, and I will come back to you.” “Don’t be ridiculous, Flora. You won’t die.” Florian wrapped his arms around his sister and buried his nose in her sweet-smelling hair. “I plan for us both to live forever. "
23 " If … a rejected gift comes back to you … when you most need it, wouldn’t it be blasphemous … to refuse it again?” “I don’t understand,” Johann said, but he did. Not in his head, but somewhere deeper. He understood it in his bones, a stone kept in a lonely boy’s pocket, a toy that cannot be broken. Florian probably waited all these years for Hallandrette to send his sister back to him, but here was Johann. And here was Florian. It had to mean something. To Johann, it meant everything. "
24 " (...) magic is not in the brain, miss; it is in the bones. "
25 " A shadow in Elendhaven's gutter. A name said in a certain tone of voice. That's what makes a thing real. Skin that glows like the part of an insect under the exoskeleton. Hands that do terrible things, work that needs to be done. A hallway that you cannot take another step forward in. "
26 " Florian lived alone in a house full of corpses for two months. He became used to them: to the smell and the bloat, to the rot and the strange colours a human being turned hen there was no soul inside of them. "
27 " He understood it in his bones, a stone kept in a lonely boy's pocket, a toy that cannot be broken. Florian probably waited all these years for Hallandrette to send his sister back to him, but here was Johann. And here was Florian. It had to mean something. To Johann, it meant everything. "
28 " Was this an effect of his aberrant nature? A siren song that rose up from his pheromones and unlocked the secret desires of humans who spent too long in his shadow? "
29 " Oh, yes, there was mischief to be done. Whistling to himself, John put his hands in his pockets and disappearted into the crowd. "
30 " You never knew when the man sitting next to you on the train was an honest-to-god monster. "
31 " Annihilation is a fire that cleanses what it burns. For a corrupted world, apocalypse is the only hope for redemption.” Johann studied his master’s cherubic profile. Don’t you feel it, sometimes? As if the world wants to consume itself. "
32 " Well, that’s entirely in your hands, isn’t it, sugarsnap?” Johann purred, brushing back Florian’s hair. “Nothing gets broken if you don’t struggle. "
33 " I am a brother who loved, Florian said, and I can attest that there is no brotherly love between Elendhaven and the South, or the Old Kingdoms.For the true sons and daughters of Elendhaven, our mother is the sea and our sister is the winter. We stand alone at the edge of the world, as I stood alone atop the corpses of my family.When you go forth from this city, you will bring the same ruin to your people that you allowed to befall mine.I am Hallandrette's favourite son and I will devour your bones as surely as she does when her unloved children are cast into the ocean. "
34 " The role became so lived-in and claustrophobic that the effort required to peel back the skin was not worth the reveal. "