love?

“There is no pretending. I love you, and I will love you until I die, and if there’s a life after that, I’ll love you then.”

“Do you still love me?”

“I promise, Matthias. I’ll take you home.”

“Mock me all you like. Whatever I imagined then, now it is I who would beg and grovel for a kind word from your lips. By you, I am forever undone.”

“But you’re the love I chose, Emma. Out of everyone in the world, out of everyone I’ve ever known, I chose you. I’ve always had faith in that choice. At the edge of everything, love and faith have always brought me back, and back to you.”

He leans into my ear. Lowers his voice. “Ignite, my love. Ignite.”

“I can offer you my life, but it is a short life; I can offer you my heart, though I have no idea how many more beats it shall sustain.”

“I loved her. Despite everything. Despite the lies, the betrayal, the hurt. I didn’t know if she returned that love, and I didn’t care. If she was destined to burn in hell, I would burn with her.”

“If I were to live a thousand years, I would belong to you for all of them. If we were to live a thousand lives, I would want to make you mine in each one. All I want is you.”

“I want you. I want all of you. I want you inside and out and catching your breath and aching for me like I ache for you. It’s never been a secret. I’ve never tried to hide that from you. I’ve never pretended I wanted anything less.”

“She is in all of his spaces and all of his thoughts. He contemplates formulas and degrees of rationality and they all turn into her. He thinks about time, which has only recently begun, or at least now feels different. He thinks: the Babylonians were wrong; time is made of her.”

“But we’re in Earth-616, love. We’re going to have our happy ending. It just may take us awhile to get there.”

“Beautiful in the way pain was beautiful, because it tugged at the chest and made something visceral come alive in the stomach and caused blood to simmer in the veins. Enchanting in the way she imagined dark magic was, because it twisted the air around it and warped the mind and overpowered the senses. Haunting in the way only very few living things could be, because it sent a shiver down the spine and cloaked itself in the darkness and fed on the energy around them.”