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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
E.C. Garrett
Read between
January 3 - January 19, 2025
My hand stills as I reach for the books on my nightstand. They're too heavy. There will be more books. Staying alive matters more than keeping your books.
“Go behind Taran in the corner, into the pile of wood shavings. I do it all the time at the barn.” “Okay, but the way you say that so casually is something we will be discussing later, Amalia,” Dyana says, chastising me as she shoves her way behind Taran to the far end of the stall.
The audacity of males really makes me want to kill something sometimes.
“If you bite me, little liar, you’ll find I bite back.” Os smiles
“And you, Amalia Roth, you don’t smell like a human,” he bursts into my mind, and I try to shove him out to no avail. “You smell like home.”
You want to play? Okay, let’s play.
He leans back and smiles. A hungry, vicious smile, and I see two small fangs on either side of his mouth. He’s magnetic already, but when he smiles? He’s devastation and ruin.
“When I taste you, it won’t be the Gods you cry out for, little liar,”
I am the hunter, not the hunted.
On the outside, I don’t move or make a sound. On the inside, my screams tear down the realms.
“And I’m going to enjoy slitting your throat because if you ever touch my horse again, I'll fucking kill you."
I smile, and Os blinks, rolling to his side. “Do that again.” The order rolls through me, and I roll my eyes, but the smile stays on my face. We say nothing for a few moments, just watching each other. It’s easy to get lost in his eyes.
“We all have scars here, and the invisible ones are far worse.”
When Os runs his hands through my hair, I gasp. He begins easily weaving my hair into a simple three-strand braid. My Father used to braid my hair when I was young. My mother taught him how to do hers, and he loved getting to teach me as she watched, proud and desperately in love. It’s heartbreak and need as I flash between past and present. I hate it; I hope he never stops.
The Gods are gone and all that’s left is chaos and despair.
I let out a deep breath and prepare for the wave of putrid feces that hits me, telling myself this is just another day at the barn, scooping horse shit. It’s just… really, really big horse shit.
“There is no place for me anywhere, Dragon.”
I’m afraid of this life, this situation, everything; but in this moment, I’m not afraid of this Dragon.
A feeling sparks in me, then. Something new. A tiny kernel deep inside me that latches on and waits, biding its time. I let it.
Maybe I'm not always the rock. Perhaps I'm the ocean, uncontrollable and wild, and the ones I love are the rocks, tethering me to shore.
You're in my soul, Amalia. I would wait a lifetime and then some if that's what you need."
"I know, A gahrá. I am in your soul. Just...know that you never have to run from me."
"I would wait an eternity for you, little spark."
"I see you for all that you are and all that you aren't. I see your heart and all of your broken pieces. I accept you just as you are."
The cry of pain it makes causes another piece of my broken, shriveled heart to disappear, crushed into dust and ash. The sound is pain and relief and sorrow. It's every emotion all at once, but the relief in the sound is enough to kill me. Tears start falling, unbidden.
Fuck, I'm so glad he didn't die, but I also want to stab him in his annoying face.
“For all that you’ve given, and all that you have yet to give; for you, Amalia Roth, I will fight one last time,”
The last stand of the Dragons begins now.
Sometimes, she gets this look. A quiet, silent type of fury that burns harder than a blazing wildfire. Not much scares me anymore, but that does. She does.
There are no nightmares this time. Maybe because I finally have a beast of my own to scare them away.
If I can give them any bit of peace and love before their time is up, I will. Even if it means I lose another piece of myself in the process.”
A part of me is ready for Remus to realize what a monster I am and finally walk away. But he laces his fingers with mine.
“There are already so many chances to die, what’s one more?”
"We are not forgotten, we are feared!"
We reunite, but I feel like an outsider, prying on a private moment between family. Despite the fact that I just put my life on the line for the woman I love. A woman who doesn't love me in return. This, I think, is the worst wound of all.
Remus carefully peels off my boots and socks, cupping my ankle and healing me with reverent hands, I realize this isn't hope. I think, perhaps, this is love.
You are a light in this dark and awful world; you are a light, my light, and my heart is yours.”
Amalia’s eyes burn with the promise of death.
And so I enter the villain’s lair, not as the damsel or the hero, but as the judge, the jury, and the executioner.
From ashes and death, amongst the forest and the beasts, Amalia Roth is born. A monster of the world’s making.
