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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Clare Sager
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July 22 - July 24, 2025
Who knew being held hostage could be so civilised?
It’s the clothes that are wrong, not you.
“There’s my villain.”
“Everything is a game. It’s simply that in some games the stakes are higher.”
It’s much easier to keep a secret when you don’t know it.
I wasn’t small, just hidden—a threat he didn’t see because he underestimated it.
“I am yours to command.” Five words had never stolen my breath quite like that.
I consent to this. Freely. Willingly. Wholeheartedly. I trust you, Katherine.”
He gave me space in his arms so I could find respite. It made my heart at once full and sore.
“I want you to touch me, Kat. Burn me, my beloved flame.” His submission warmed me, filled me. He chose me, chose this… chose us.
“Do I get to worship you yet?”
Our kisses rewrote new stories over all we’d burned away.
“Katherine,” he breathed, hands fisting in the sheets. He had a way of making my name more than its syllables. A prayer to gods who actually listened. An incantation. A purpose and intent.
“My body is mine. I won’t be defined by what someone else has done to it. Not anymore. This life is mine. I am mine.”
“You know there’s no need to apologise, don’t you?”
“And you know your feelings aren’t silly, right?”
“The fact that tonight I’ll be able to reach out when I wake up and find you instead of the empty space where you are meant to be. I can’t wait to go to bed just to be able to do that.” He opened his eyes and locked his gaze with mine. “I swear for the rest of my days, I will never take that for granted.”
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“The rest of your days?” Hearing him say that did strange things to my stomach. Good things. The kind of things the old Kat had given up believing in. But that maybe… No. Not maybe. Definitely the kind of things that I had here with him. “Every single one of them, if you’ll keep me that long.” “I will keep you, Bastian. Always.”
I hated that my world felt like it was cracking and I had no power to hold it together.
“Tell me I’m wrong, because I’m not sure I want to be right.”
The Crown was in the Underworld. To make a place that was better, to let the people I care about truly live, I had to go there. Maybe there would be some way back. Maybe not. “Such hope is holding on. You must give yourself entirely.”
“Dying for something important is better than surviving for nothing.”
I wanted to do that with Bastian. I wanted to win another smile from him, another laugh—hells, a hundred more. I wanted to hear him say my name a thousand times. I wanted the touch of his skin on mine, the little gestures that said he was there and he wanted to touch me just because—just because it was pleasing, just because that warmth was a reminder, just because he loved me.
I am so sorry I couldn’t stay alive for you or tell you I was here. It seems wrong that I could only give you a name.”
And there, before an audience of the dead, the Wild Hunt, the bound Horrors, and me, Drystan crowned Katherine.
A crown didn’t make her a queen, but she was my queen. I would honour, worship, obey, kneel before her and beg, if I had to. Anything she asked.
“I love this woman. If our fates were different, I would marry her a million times over. But regardless of contracts, you will treat her as though I am her husband and she is my wife. You will listen to her. Obey her orders. Treat her like the fucking queen she is. Do you understand?”
until this moment I had never felt so thoroughly possessed. Bastian Marwood had every part of me, body, heart, soul, and all the indefinable strands between.
“Bastian,” I breathed as they lay on either side of me. “I… I read about love… I dreamed of it… but I never knew it would be like this. I survived without you, but this feels like living.”
“Get your fucking hands off her.”
“Katherine. My beautiful idiot. I would choose you over her—over anyone—a thousand times in a thousand lives. You have saved me.”
Remember who you are.
“When power is too concentrated, it is too easily abused,
He commanded shadows, but he was no longer hidden by them.
“You look… happy.” She nodded as she said it, as though her body needed to emphasise that word and not just her voice. I took her hand and Horwich’s. “I am.” Gods, my eyes burned. Because I truly was. Happiness wasn’t something I’d expected—not since I’d grown into a woman and discovered the reality that came with that. It wasn’t something I’d dared hope for. And yet, somehow, I’d stumbled into it. No. That wasn’t right. There had been some stumbling, true, but also, I’d grown my happiness, nurtured it along with myself.
“Still a highwaywoman, aren’t you?” I blinked up at him. “In what way?” “First you stole my orrery, and somewhere along the way you stole the rest of me.
“My Wicked Lady.”
“That’s because you were never ‘just’ anything. I’m simply glad you realise it now.”
My chin wobbled as I fought a losing battle with my tears. He just held me and let me give in, until I was ready to come up for air. “I know it means I’m lucky. The fact I’m this sad, I mean.” “It does.” He thumbed the tears from my cheeks. “And it means you have a future to worry about. I’m very glad of that, particularly as you seem to enjoy doing things like drinking poison and throwing yourself off balconies.”
“Indulge me, Katherine.”
“Just for a moment I had this fantasy of coming here and having a relaxed dinner with our friends. You were laughing, smiling, happy, and I had my arm slung over the back of your chair while I played with your hair. It was brief but so vivid. And good gods, I wanted it.”
I’d always been in other people’s spaces, but this was ours from the start.
“Katherine Ferrers,” he sighed as he crossed the room and took my hands. “This is absolutely, utterly…” He shook his head, eyes a little bright. “It’s fucking perfect. So incredible, I’ve been speechless the whole time. I thought you were going to just give the place a lick of paint, but you’ve… you’ve given it touches of the people we love as well as somehow making it uniquely ours.” He pressed my hands together and kissed my fingertips. “Thank you.”
I’d managed to make us a home, and next week we would move in and fill it with the richness of our lives. It was somewhere we could grow together and maybe even grow old.
You may not be a queen, Katherine, but I think you’d look glorious on a throne… naked… completely undone… crying out my name. My ember sparking bright.”
He wore this small smile, pleased and… something else. “I love you, Kat, but I adore hearing how passionate you are about your work.”
