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

by Tahereh Mafi

When had she allowed Cyrus to take up so many rooms inside her? Nothing had even happened between them.

OF COURSE CYRUS KNEW HE was being followed. She possessed all the subtlety of a dragon in slumber.

He was a fool to think of her at all.

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.

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

His use of magic, she’d felt, was deeply unfair.

He knows her so well

It was the kind of contradiction she often felt repeated in herself: that she was both useless and powerful; unimportant and essential.

That day, Cyrus had learned cowardice was a luxury.

“It’s never been done,” he whispered. “No man has ever wagered against the devil and won.”

Heavens, but he was devastatingly handsome.

Cyrus couldn’t die. Not now. Not yet. Heavens, she thought. Not ever.

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 couldn’t fathom that she’d thought him worth such an effort, that she’d risk her own safety to spare his life. It made him want to do unforgivable things.

“Why? Because you’re terribly handsome?” “Don’t be funny,” he said, breathing hard. “This isn’t funny.”

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.

“Promise me—promise you’ll take care of her.”

“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.”

“Have you never seen the way he looks at her?”

“I disagree,” said the prince with immaculate calm. “In fact, I think it will do nicely for revenge.” He met Cyrus’s eyes. “You will die, she will inherit your empire, and then— I shall marry her.”

Kamran is swiftly losing whatever points he still possesses

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.”

She’d lately been trying to understand her burgeoning hesitations toward Kamran, and the more she interrogated her feelings, the more she’d begun to wonder whether it was, in the end, less that he’d wounded her vanity and more that he hadn’t respected her mind.

All she had to do was imagine him touching her to stir up a tempest in her heart. When she recalled the sight of him—his powerful, gleaming body, the ferocious need in his eyes—not only did she struggle for breath, but she was possessed by a mortifying impulse to make an indelicate sound, and had to bite her lip to keep the tortured whimper trapped in her throat.

I love her

“Do you think I’ve been lying to you?” “Yes,” she said, and paused. “Except that I have the strangest feeling you might be lying about how horrible you are.”

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;

“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.”