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For every spark that has lost its light and needs a little help remembering how to glow.
And when we’d said our final goodbyes, the way he’d looked at me, the way he’d kissed me... A shiver rolled down my spine.
If you are outnumbered or overwhelmed, or if all seems lost, just keep moving. Onward, until the very last breath.
The scar that tore across his face looked darker than ever, a harbinger of the destruction he had the power to unleash.
He smelled like the forest—my favorite place in the world, the only place I felt truly alive.
He smelled like home. It made me hate him even more.
“And wait until you see the library, it’s enormous. You’re never going to want to leave.”
Five minutes. I just needed five gods-damned minutes of peace and quiet.
This woman I had become now... I despised her.
She was strong, undeniably so, but in all the wrong ways. Strength could be fueled by love just as easily as hate.
“I have so many reasons to hate you.” “Do you?” he growled. “Or is it easier to blame your anger on me than look in the mirror and confront the truth?”
“Stop running away, Diem. Face what you are and what you’re meant to become.”
And he was grinning. Grinning. The sight of it undid me. I was a dying star, exploding and imploding, consuming all I touched.
The explosion of power was a pressure valve for my anger.
I was empty in every sense of the word.
The chaos was still in there somewhere, rumbling under the surface, but for the first time in months, I could sit in silence and just be.
Tears, anger, panic, hope—they all seemed oddly foreign, objects that belonged to someone else.
Even when I dared to let my mind drift to my darkest thoughts, the fears hiding within were no more than br...
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“Maybe the magic made a mistake.” “The magic doesn’t make mistakes.”
“They want us to feel small, Eleanor. They want us to be quiet, be predictable, be unimportant, behave. Then they make us think we deserve it. But I think they’re just terrified we’ll stop listening to them and start listening to each other. And do you know why they’re so scared of women like us?”
“But rest assured, my Queen, when I do kiss you, there will be no confusion. You will know that I have claimed you—and I won’t have any desire to deny it.”
Our eyes met, and the pain in them sliced through me as sharp as any blade.
But perhaps somewhere, deep within, I already knew the truth, because all I felt was the unbearable heaviness of a heart grieving a loss that my brain still refused to accept. “You’re saying I have to let him go,” I said numbly.
Under the weight of the exhaustion that had taken up permanent residence in my soul, all my walls splintered and shattered into a fine powder.
“That if a man made you doubt whether his love for you would survive anything, he does not deserve you.”
Tell them as little as possible. About yourself, your plans, your magic.
I might have been dressed like a songbird, but inside I was still a hawk.
“A mate is so much more. A mating bond can only be made by love—true love.”
“Any two Descended can attempt the mating ritual, but the bonding magic will only work if your love is genuine and unconditional, and if you freely commit to stand by your mate forever, in life and in death. Once you’re mated, your heart is bound to your mate for eternity. You can never love anyone else.” “Never? Even if they die?” “Never. It’s a legacy of the Kindred’s choice to give up their immortality for their mortal lovers.”
“Being mated isn’t just a relationship,” Taran said, his expression equally aglow. “It changes you physically. Your bodies become two halves of a whole. If you’re away from your mate for too long, you get ill and your magic weakens. They say you can even die from it.”
“To be connected so deeply to the one you love, even beyond death... it’s the greatest joy anyone can experience.”
“Royals marry for strategic alliances, not for love.”
He held me there like a butterfly cupped between his hands, fluttering against his touch and wondering if he would be my doom. Every hair on my neck stood on end as he turned his lips to my ear, his voice low and rough. “Something I cannot have.”
“Food, no. Chocolate, yes. Whiskey... maybe.”
“Embrace your phoenix. Rise from the ashes, and burn bright once more.”
The massive hall had been decorated to match the palace exterior. Every wall was blanketed in dark, tangled vines speckled with glittering flowers that cast dots of light in motion around the room. The vaulted ceiling disappeared beneath a thick cloud of shadow dusted with glowing orbs that bobbed as if floating in a sea of midnight ink. If the ballroom had been crafted into a night sky, then Aemonn and I were the full moon, bathing the room in our regal glow.
blank canvas. A blushing bride. A white flag of surrender. Soft. Virginal. Harmless. All the things I wasn’t.
My fakery worked, and Evrim puffed up like a fluttering peacock.
Today, my grief was a sharp, pointed thing. A weapon—a mace, covered in poisoned spikes, ready to demolish anyone it swung at. So I was doing my best to aim it in the right direction.
His dreams of greatness lay in books, not in battle.
“I prayed his love for you would give him a greater purpose. Without you... I confess, I fear what he might become.”
“Even good men can lose their way.”
But no matter how hard I fled from my problems, there were truths chasing me I couldn’t outrun much longer.
“It’s a beautiful day to save some lives,”
“Has he lost you forever?” This time, I didn’t answer.
“Taran, my mother is missing, my father is dead, my brother’s in danger, and I’m probably about to die. Believe me, I have no shortage of emotions.” “Maybe somewhere in there, but you’re not letting yourself feel them.”
The moment you start to feel anything real, you shut it down.”
When I looked at him, there was a softness to his eyes, a profound gravity I didn’t often see.
I cried for every person who had prayed for a spark of hope in this dreary, oppressive world, and the endless dark they’d found in return.
“You’ve certainly been swinging your fists around everywhere you go, but you haven’t been fighting. You’re going through the motions and biding your time until someone takes pity on you and strikes a killing blow. You’ve lost that spirit that makes you... you.”
