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

by Tahereh Mafi

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

It was wrong, all wrong. 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 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.

I’m not sure a person should be reduced to a single purpose,” she said, “for the human heart is known to contain such diversity of feeling and expression—”

“You could probably kill me and I’d thank you for it.”

I stan a simp emo king who's constantly yearning 🤭

In fact, what intelligence he’d gathered of Kamran had been generally favorable; by all accounts he was a decent royal and a formidable soldier, and when Cyrus had first encountered the young man at the ball he’d felt no ill will toward 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. Somehow it didn’t matter that Alizeh had been but a conjuring of his imagination. It didn’t matter that they’d never known each other outside of the delusions of his mind. It didn’t matter that she owed him nothing. He’d loved her. It was a hallucination, a fantasy. He knew that, and yet he could not reason with his emotions. Fiction or not, she’d embedded inside him, replaced the air in his lungs. That she’d proven to be real—more exquisite than he’d dreamed—and entirely ignorant of him, had been more than he could bear. To then discover that she’d given her heart to another—that he’d known her in ways Cyrus never would—had been nearly unsurvivable. And yet, it was the only reason he hadn’t killed Kamran that night. Because he suspected she cared for him.

“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.”

“What are friends for, if not to kill your enemies?”

If I let fear keep me from doing what is right, I will always be wrong.”

He wanted to live here. Dig his grave and die here. “Angel,” he breathed. “My angel.”

He wondered if she had any idea what he’d do for her, the worlds he’d destroy for her.

“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.”