The Throne of Broken Gods (Gods & Monsters, #2)

by Amber V. Nicole

The thought of just being a simple fuck to her makes me wish to get disemboweled repeatedly. That would hurt less.”

“You are nothing like him.” I dropped my hand to my side. “Others would disagree.” “Others do not know you as I do.”

“Your smile, Dianna, is only one of the most beautiful things about you.”

Grieving is another form of love, Dianna. Do not unlove her by burying it.

I didn’t move, didn’t speak. Samkiel stood there waiting for me, and I wondered if he had waited like this every day after I left.

“You’d give me a whole beach?” “The world, if you wish.”

“Your reactions, as quick and harsh as they are, come from a place that wishes to protect you. You hurt, so you hurt others. It’s a defense mechanism.

No matter how mean I was, how cruel, vile, and hateful, Samkiel saw me, and he cared.

He chased away all my demons, and I would chase away his too.

“To be loved by the great Dianna would be a gift beyond imagining. Anyone to receive your love and be claimed by you would be lucky.”

Yet he looked at me as if he would rip the world to pieces for me, and I knew I would do so much worse for him.

Samkiel said he couldn’t fix a broken heart, but how could I tell him he already was?

Samkiel’s hand had brushed mine and set a thousand nerve endings on fire.

I thought about Samkiel. I always thought about Samkiel. Even when I lied and said I didn’t.

I’d wished for Dianna to laugh again, and hearing it now was music to my soul. What a beautiful sound. If only the gods could bottle it up, I’d get drunk off of it every night.

Samkiel was just a boy in love with a girl.

Love was nothing but magic in its purest form.

I didn’t need my powers to know that something monumental between us was about to change. It felt like the world knew it and held its breath in anticipation.

It was Samkiel. It had always been Samkiel. Nothing would ever be the same again.

For the first time in months, I felt something.

“You are mine.” “Yours,” I gasped, his claim vanquishing the ugliness of my doubts and fears, the painful echoes of rejection and loneliness.

“I can barely breathe without you, Dianna.”

He lifted his head to stare at me like he always had, as if I were more precious to him than anything in this realm or the next. As if I were more precious than his crown, his throne, all of it, and at that moment, I truly believed it.

“You are better than any destiny.”

“Death will hopefully give you the peace you did not have in this life.”

“This changes nothing. Nothing, Dianna. She still is and will always be your sister. The same one you grew up with, the same one you experienced life with, the same one you died for, lived for, and fought for. Blood is the least of what makes a family. Trust me.”

“Do you wish for me to beg? I’ll beg.”

The look on his face took my breath away, and I knew I would never forget it. I would remember it until I was dust between the stars.

I wanted him to know, to see, that even if I could not say the words he so desperately wanted, he owned me, mind, body, and soul.

You led me out of my darkness, Dianna. Now let me lead you, or I can follow you into the dark, but there is no me without you. Not anymore.

When Samkiel looked at me, it was as if he saw into my very soul and cared for every single part—the good, the bad, the ugly, and the cruel.

“Hmm,” I said, turning to face him. “Nice suit, Vincent.” Vincent came to my side, as tense now as he was when he first started working for me.

I KNEW I DIDNT TRUST THAT MOTHERFUCKER

“We bury ourselves in others because we cannot have the one we truly want. We don’t feel worthy of them.”

My last thought was of him. It was always him.

“The Equinox was the start of you, and now it will be our liberation from you. Worlds aligned when you were born, they aligned when you destroyed Rashearim, and now they will align for your death.”

Our father. He’d had so many lies, and he had damned the world, damned us all.

How much stress do you think one person can take, Otherworld or not, before they just want a break?

I feel like with each passing day I put it to the test fr… how much more before I shatter?

Secrets. The world and I would pay dearly for the secrets my father kept.

Paradise, that’s what she was to me and what I’d so desperately miss. I knew that even in death, I’d find no peace in the afterlife, for there was no peace without her. My only regret was not telling her sooner how deeply she’d burrowed into my heart, becoming a piece of my soul.

“You are my whole world.” He looked up at me, and my heart shattered.

I looked down at Samkiel. He was limp in my arms and deathly gray, all his color stripped away, my sunshine gone. My soul cleaved in two. Pain didn’t come close to describing what I felt holding him.

“How deeply you must love someone that death itself fears taking them?”