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“"Eva?" the monster whispered, feathering a panicked touch to her cheek. Her color was fading, a deathly pallor swallowing the rosy hue of sun-touched skin. "Wake up," it pleaded weakly, cradling the back of her neck to prevent her head from lolling. Salt burned the corners of its eyes. Strange, how tears could hurt sometimes. With a little sob, the monster repositioned Eva on the grass and pressed both palms to the wound in her side. The gentle pressure made Eva convulse, her eyes slitting open. She moaned. "I’m sorry." The monster couldn’t tell where its panic ended and Arthur’s began. The level of terror coursing through their shared being was so violent it made the monster nauseous. "I’m so sorry. But you’ve got to stay awake for me.” It scrubbed under its eyes, clearing the blurriness away, tasting salt. "You have to stay.” Eva’s lips parted, but no sound came out. The monster stripped off Arthur’s shirt and balled it up, then pressed it to her wound. "Come on, Freckles,” it choked out. The monster had never prayed before. What was a creature like it supposed to do with God, anyway? But it firmly believed that if anyone should curry divine favor, it was Arthur’s bee girl.”

DyingRomantasyPersonality DisorderDark HeroIrredeemableInner DemonRomantic Tragedy
Book:Honey in Her Veins
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“As a girl, she’d lived on folktales. They were the water to her family’s roots, and she’d grown up on stories of bargains and broken hearts. Even Dad’s stories often ended in tragedy. When she was young, Eva thought it terribly romantic to love what you were destined to lose. Now she called bullshit. It was easy to say that you’d die for someone, but what Eva really wanted was the kind of love that stood its ground when things got difficult, the kind of love that chose to live. For years, she’d fed her anger to survive, picturing her heart like a garden made to wither in the cold, and she’d blamed Arthur for killing the part of her that had believed in their story. But his touch awakened something in her again. As Arthur moaned into the skin of her neck, pressing his lips to her body and making goose bumps erupt down her arms, Eva wondered if maybe she’d been wrong all this time. Gardens never really die, after all. Seeds lie dormant, and soil goes fallow, all in the faith that one day, when the conditions are right, it will bloom again.”

HeartGardenRenewalYoung Adult RomanceRomantasyFolktales
Book:Honey in Her Veins
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“”Do you think she’ll like your new tattoos? Instinctively, I touched the inside of my forearm where one of the sleeves of ink began. What had started as an act of defiance had metamorphosed into armor with every new design. Little black songbirds flew up my skin, the arc of a wing shading the scar beneath. Woodland details filled in the gaps between the varied species of birds and a curl of honeycomb rounding my left biceps. The latter had been an impulse, really. A nostalgic dig of the knife that suddenly felt far too exposing.”

TattoosBittersweet Love
Book:Honey in Her Veins
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“Something changed. The glow in my chest ballooned down to my fingertips. I couldn’t feel the monster, nor could I hear its voice, as sunshine and power poured into my limbs, filling my heart to bursting. I gathered all the love I could muster for Eva, all the years spent missing her, all the ways she’d changed me and made me new. The flowers around us seemed to sigh, the heartbeat of the earth so close I could taste it. I could take it. But I didn’t want to take things anymore. I wanted to mend. A heady sensation filled the gaps in my mind where the darkness lay. But this was not my monster. It was sweet, and it poured through me, through Eva too, bright and sweet as sticky, sugary gold. Every breath was honeyed. Every breath was life.”

TransformationMagical RealismRomantasyEarth MagickHoneyed
Book:Honey in Her Veins
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“It was an artist's palette. Wildflowers painted the ground in a vision of violet, gold, and blue. There was snakeroot and southern harebell, even the sunny pop of yellow spreading avens. But the crown jewel was the Lotties: They swayed in the wind, royal and delicate, their whisper of life reaching out to where Eva stood. The honeyman found a garden of everlasting life.”

BlueFlowersWildflowersMeadowFolktale
Book:Honey in Her Veins
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“Nothing, however, sold like raw honeycomb. This late in the summer, bottles of the sticky, sugared medicine practically flew off their shelves. Eva understood. Twenty-five years of keeping the bees with her father and older sister, and still she thrilled each time she sank her teeth into those warm, dripping cells. There was a strangely primal allure to that hint of spice among the sweet, pollen and enzymes sliding down her tongue. It was hard, when paired with one of the teas in their Honey Shoppe, not to call that magic. Tourists came from miles around for a taste of the honeyman’s bottled summertime and a sachet of herbs they fully believed would rid them of their ailments. Dad shrugged off their wilder beliefs, always saying that nature was magic enough. He didn’t disclose his somewhat enchanted green thumb, or his habit of collecting rare and mysterious flowers far up the mountain. Nor did he mention his magical daughter, whose greenhouse was brimming with herbs and florals Eva had cultivated to heal and cure.”

HoneyFamily BusinessHerbal MagicShoppe
Book:Honey in Her Veins
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