Lev Grossman

He wished he weren’t so tired. And so stupid. He wished he could either fall back in love with Julia or get over her all the way. Maybe he was stuck in between forever, like the space between the portals. Food for the trolls.

They’d miss him but they’d live. Quentin, king of Fillory, needed Fillory more than Fillory needed him.

Here was somebody who was having a good time. He was doing what he wanted and enjoying himself. He’d been through everything Quentin had been through: he lost the girl he loved, and he nearly died. He didn’t sit around moaning and philosophizing about it. He bounced back and set himself up in a palazzo.

“You wish to be a hero, but you do not know what a hero is. You think a hero is one who wins. But a hero must be prepared to lose, Quentin. Are you? Are you prepared to lose everything?”

She couldn’t go back, she knew that now. The magic kingdom was closed to her. But some days she couldn’t see a way forward either.

She wasn’t demented—she wasn’t!—it was just a game she played with herself. It was a little insane, but hey, whatever got you through, right?

She knew she was obsessed, but it was turning out that she was the kind of person who needed to be obsessed with something, and she could have done a lot worse. God knows she had before.

They’d been so young and innocent and hopeful, and they’d found something more wonderful than they could ever have hoped for, and it had destroyed them.

So what if he wasn’t a king. It had been lovely for a while, but here was real life, and he would make the most of it like everybody else. What kind of a hero was he, if he couldn’t do that?

Only Julia picked at her food, managing a bite every few minutes, like her body was an unloved pet that she was being forced to babysit.