More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Tahereh Mafi
Read between
November 1 - November 1, 2025
There are only two choices, little one. Cyrus moved to speak, a fragile hope gathering in his chest, but his old teacher lifted a hand to stop him. It was with unmistakable sorrow that the man looked him in the eye and said— Few can die. Or many.
Interesting
“Are you implying that I’m vain?” “I’m not implying it, Kamran. I’m delivering the statement to you directly.” “You’re an ass.”
I love hazan!!! Humble him please
She didn’t know how to describe this feeling, this breathless languor. No one had ever looked at her the way he did, as if the sight of her might be fatal.
Her body had never felt so alive, so electrified. When had she allowed Cyrus to take up so many rooms inside her? Nothing had even happened between them.
Clearly something did
As if she could draw near him without his knowledge—as if he couldn’t hear the dragging hem of his borrowed cloak on her body. It was torture enough to imagine her wearing his clothes,
For as long as he lived he feared he’d know the scent of her, the sound of her walking toward him. She was a fool to think otherwise. He was a fool to think of her at all.
She could not know his dilemma: that her inexpert shadow infuriated him even as it soothed him, that he wanted to vanish even as he couldn’t bear the thought of abandoning her here, in the frigid dark. He wanted her closer than he could express in words, wanted her bare and trembling in his arms, wanted to excoriate these sensations from his skin. He wanted to lop off his own head and hurl it into the river.
Im going to die
This was still inconceivable to him, that he’d confessed to dreaming of her night after night; that for eight agonizing months he’d known the taste, the heat, the silk of her in his sleep.
Her ultimate show of compassion toward him had been his undoing, for this, layered upon all else, had proven she was every inch the angelic figure he’d cherished in his dreams. Not only had he been horribly wrong about her, he’d treated her cruelly. He knew now that she was so far above him he wasn’t even worthy of standing in her shadow. Certainly he had no right to desire anything from her.
God, he’d wanted her. He’d wanted her with an all-consuming thirst, with the desperation of a man waiting to die.
He would always be the villain in her story.
NO MY BABYI LOVE YOU
MELT THE ICE IN SALT BRAID THE THRONES AT SEA IN THIS WOVEN KINGDOM CLAY AND FIRE SHALL BE
A spider roughly the size of his face peered at him from its perch in midair,
I think the fuck not
It was a torturously long moment before she said— You are? Sad. Sad. Sad. Cyrus swallowed. “Yes,” he whispered.
Fate, he thought bitterly, was only romantic when one was destined to be the hero.
Clay girls and boys my favorite toys! Soon they’ll come together And she will choose and you will lose to a clod tied to a feather
Never have we lost a match We swear it by the stars Never shall you have the girl Her fate is twined with ours
He longed for her warmth, for her radiance. She’d been, from the first moment she’d wandered into his dreams, an enduring flame in the endless night, his only haven in the madness that inhaled him.
The young man did not feel as calm as he appeared, yet he knew no other way to face these horrors. “Father,” he said softly. “It’s me.” “NO!” The true king of Tulan fought uselessly against his chains, his face contorting in terror, his eyes squeezing shut.
WHAT?!
He’d never forget the first time he saw her on that calamitous night, the way she’d stepped out from behind the dressing screen. She’d appeared in the golden lamplight of Miss Huda’s bedroom like some impossible vision. Only when she’d lifted her eyes to his face and the sight of her had nearly killed him did Cyrus realize just how artfully he’d been outmaneuvered.
He knew at once he’d been tricked; he knew at once she was an instrument of the devil, sent to ruin him. And yet, he weakened each time she looked in his direction. His need grew only more explosive as she solidified into someone real; always he desired another glance, another accidental graze of her skin— He was terrified to ever dream of her again.
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.
With a sharp thwack the last arrow found its mark between her shoulder blades. Alizeh flinched under the force of impact, and her small, startled gasp rendered Cyrus absolutely, inhumanly still. Panic inhaled him. He felt blind with it, blind with madness.
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.
“Who are you talking to?” His heart was beating faster now. “My dragon,” he said. “Oh.” A little line formed between her brows. “You have a dragon?” “I— Yes.” “Just like you did before.” She stifled a yawn, her eyes closing. “Do I get one, too?” Cyrus frowned. “Would that . . . please you?” “Yes, I think so.” “All right.” He blinked slowly. “You can have a dragon.”
She laughed at that, then bit her lip, and her eyes were so joyous and beautiful the sight caused him physical pain.
“I want it all, angel. Not just your joy but your sorrow. Not just your hope but your fear. I want your anger and disdain, your frustration and contempt—”
“But I know, too, that you’ll always do what is just. 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.”
“Your thickheaded, self-righteous behavior has no place on the throne. If you do not learn to set yourself aside in the service of others, you will never deserve your crown.”
Hell yeah bruh
him. It wasn’t until he realized Kamran had won Alizeh’s affections—that they’d known each other with some intimacy, that she’d cared for him enough to protect him— Only then had he grown to hate the prince.
Unmoored, it took every bit of Cyrus’s self-possession to keep from displaying his horror. He’d not considered such a manipulative tactic on the part of the prince, and he should have.
Yeah im fully team cyrus now
“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.”
“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.”
Cyrus reached into his pocket, then uncurled his fist, within which sat the nosta the Diviners had found hidden on Alizeh’s body. Weeks ago they’d delivered this magical object to Cyrus, and though the discovery had been a shock, it had also comforted him to know that so long as she’d possessed it, she might’ve known he was trustworthy. He finally looked at Hazan. “She got this from you, didn’t she?” Hazan held very still, though panic flit in and out of his eyes. “Where did you get that?” “I might ask you the same question,” said Cyrus. “Considering this is mine.”
WHAT
and I want to know whether she will be safe as your wife.”
“Always,” he said. “She will always be safe with me.”
It was unconscious, what she did next; she didn’t mean to touch him, not exactly. In fact, she couldn’t even remember lifting her hand to his body. She only remembered the softness of his sweater, the heat and hardness of his torso beneath—and then relief, intoxicating relief when he finally touched her, when he dragged his hands down her body with a tortured sound, his palms branding her through the thin tissue of her dress before he gripped her hips, hard, and she bit back a cry, startling as the door slammed shut only to discover, with a shock, that she was pressed against it, held in place
...more
Swoon
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” he said, his voice so rough it was unrecognizable. “You don’t know what I want from you, angel. You can’t even imagine.”
“Everything,” he whispered, releasing her suddenly, backing away as if she’d run him through with a blade. “I want everything.”
For all the frost in her veins, she’d never known this kind of fever, never felt such desperation. And he’d never even kissed her.
This tremble inside him, this madness in his heart—it was all for her. All for her. He could hardly look at Alizeh without losing his mind; nearly four weeks he’d seen her only in his dreams, and he’d all but forgotten how finely wrought she was in real life, how delicate her features, how soft the curves of her cheeks. He came to life when she smiled, drew breath when her eyes brightened, died when she left a room. She’d smelled like roses. His roses. And she would marry him,
Alizeh felt at once a shock of nerves, dropping the small piece of crystal in her haste to steady herself, the dull plink echoing in the newly deserted space. She bent to retrieve it, realizing as she did that it was the only item in the room that hadn’t disappeared. Alizeh looked up into Cyrus’s heated eyes and knew, without knowing why, that he’d allowed her to keep it.
“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.”
