A Promise of Lies (Shadows of the Tenebris Court #3)

by Clare Sager

For the women who got tired of waiting for a hero.

“You are worth dying for. Worth fighting for.” His voice is barely more than a rasp in his chest. “Worth everything.” He smiles. “My boy.”

These were Bastian’s rooms—the Dawn version of them, anyway. He could be standing right next to me in Dusk and neither of us would ever know.

She pointed at Cyrus, hand shaking, and hissed, “May you always have the justice you deserve.”

“Katherine Ferrers.” He said it like my name was a complete sentence—a complete story in its own right. Silvery eyes piercing me, he held my hips. “Marry me.”

“I choose you, Bastian. I have chosen you a hundred times before tonight, and I’ll choose you at every chance I get. But I will not ever choose marriage, and I won’t be forced into it again.”

Because I was going to fucking destroy him and he would never see it coming.

“You will. I’ll be there in bed with you, just the other side of the veil. Lie on the left side and place your hand in the middle. I’ll hold it all through the night.”

These are the final wishes of Nyxis Nemesine Voltarin, the Night Princess, daughter of Queen Braea. To Kaliban and Sylen, I entrust my most precious one, my baby, heir to Dusk, born of love between seelie and unseelie. I name him Bastian.

“You need to be the prince, the king, the leader you were always meant to be.”

“Katherine. My beautiful idiot. I would choose you over her—over anyone—a thousand times in a thousand lives. You have saved me.”

“It will be a life lived truly and a life truly lived.”