" Then he strode forward; as I flinched back, he dropped to his knees before me in a deep obeisance. He kissed my foot and laid his hands against my knees: the ancient posture of supplication.
Then he looked up at me, his blue eyes wide and desperate.
Once, as a child, I had sat with my ear pressed against the grandfather clock in the sitting room as it tolled noon. The peals didn't ring through my head; they rang through my entire body, from the bones in my arms to the air in my lungs, until I was nothing but a helpless vibration alongside them.
It felt the same way now. For a short, trackless time I couldn't move or breathe; I could only stare down at his pale face, his half-parted lips, and echo the thought over and over. He is begging me. "

― Rosamund Hodge , Cruel Beauty