The Dread Descendant (The Dread Descendant, #1)

by Lauren Cate Leake

“You make your own future, Maeve. I will ensure that.

“Would you like to race back?” Asked Maeve. “Only if you’d like to lose,” said Mal.

“They will not take you from me,” he assured her.

“Don’t you dare run from me,” he said quietly.

But her eyes. Those sapphire blue eyes sparkled up at him despite all else. They would be the end of him. He had been captivated by them since the first time she glared at him. And then the first time she smiled at him. It had not been a smile of joy. She smiled at him like a cornered lion, ready to play. No one had ever looked at him that way. Like they were up for the challenge. But she was his challenge.

“You don’t have to explain, Little Viper.” Maeve spoke before she could stop herself. “It feels like I have known you for a lifetime, and I am only just remembering.”

“It’s as though I’ve been suffocating and you are-” “The very air I need to breathe.”

“Like calls to like.”

“Everyone seems to be having discussions about what I can and cannot do and no one bothered to ask me.”

Ambrose puffed on his cigar. “Do you know what delights me?” Mal raised his brows. “My daughter being protected.”

“Are you mine?” She asked. He sucked in a sharp breath. “In every meaning of the word.”

AHHHH

“Don’t fret, Little Viper. You have time to set things right.”

“I will gladly die a hundred deaths if it is he who breathes life back into me.”