All This Twisted Glory (This Woven Kingdom, #3)

by Tahereh Mafi

“Are you implying that I’m vain?” “I’m not implying it, Kamran. I’m delivering the statement to you directly.”

God, he’d wanted her. He’d wanted her with an all-consuming thirst, with the desperation of a man waiting to die.

Fate, he thought bitterly, was only romantic when one was destined to be the hero.

He’d been afraid to go near her; he hadn’t been ready to hear her voice, to look into her eyes. He was terrified she’d go and do something brutal, like smile at him.

He only closed his eyes against her hair and fought the desperate crush of his chest, the violence of his affection for her. How she managed to disarm him even now, on the brink of death, he could not understand. She’d wept for his pain, wiped the blood from his eyes, taken an arrow in the back for him. She’d shown him more loyalty and tenderness in two days than he’d ever felt in his life, and he knew then, with a force that drove the air from his lungs, that he would never survive her.

You’d never deliver me your scorn unless I deserved it, and should I be foolish enough to inspire your anger, I should also be honored to receive it.”

“You must not resist life when it becomes inconvenient to live. You cannot outrun fear. You should not ignore pain. You will not outlive death.”

But life cannot be experienced one emotion at a time. It is a tapestry of sensation, a braided rope of feeling. We must allow for reflection even when we suffer. We must reach for compassion even when we triumph. If you spend your days waiting for your sorrows to end so that you might finally live”—he shook his head—“you will die an impatient man.”

“Master yourself so that you will never be mastered. Know yourself so that you might live with conviction. Live with conviction so that your steps never falter.” He paused. “The mastery of self means never fearing the consequences of doing what is right.”

“When you suffer,” Rostam went on, “you can choose to endure, or you can choose to overcome.” He gestured around them, to the vast expanse of the meadow. “Here, even in the midst of your discomfort, there existed elements of relief, if only you had bothered to search.”

“You can’t lie to me forever, Cyrus. I’m going to find out the truth about you, and when I do, I promise you this: I’ll ruin him. I’ll make the devil regret the day he was born.”