I was burning through books every day - stories about people and places I'd never heard of. They were perhaps the only thing that kept me from teeter… - Sarah J. Maas

"She moaned into her pillow. "Go away. I feel like dying."
"No fair maiden should die alone," he said, putting a hand on hers. "Shall I read to you in your final moments? What story would you like?"
She snatched her hand back. "How about the story of the idiotic prince who won't leave the assassin alone?"
"Oh! I love that story! It has such a happy ending, too — why, the assassin was really feigning her illness in order to get the prince's attention! Who would have guessed it? Such a clever girl. And the bedroom scene is so lovely — it's worth reading through all of their ceaseless banter!

"Because I am lost," she whispered onto the earth. "And I do not know the way."

With each day he felt the barriers melting. He let them melt. Because of her genuine laugh, because he caught her one afternoon sleeping with her face in the middle of a book, because he knew that she would win.