Broken by Daylight (Beasts of the Briar, #4)

by Elizabeth Helen

“Let me take no other but you. If one day, my vow shall prove false and I lie with another, let them serve you in repentance until you tire of them as I did your heart. And if ever there is no love between us, let this bargain melt away like snow under rain.”

“You’re in my light.” With a certainty he had never felt in his twenty-five years, the man replied, “You are my light.”

“I made you. I can unmake you just as easily.”

“Wherever I go, you have me. Whatever desert I leave my footprints in, whatever wilderness I inhabit or mountain I scale. It was set by the Fates and bound in the stars. You have me.”

“Whatever it takes, I will return to you, my Queen. If I have to crawl, I’ll crawl. If I have to swim through rivers of fire, I’ll swim. If I have to defy the Fates themselves and rearrange the stars, I will do it.”

Two opposite sides of the ship. I won’t be able to save them both. Might not even be able to save either. One of them is my only chance at ever breaking my curse, at not becoming a beast forever and the other . . . The other is Rosie.

But the fight doesn’t stop as long as you keep rising. Let them knock you down again and again. You just make sure you get up.”

“Even if it’s not right,” I whisper, “Day, there’s a part of my heart that will always belong to you.”

I would know you in any form anywhere in all the Vale. By the gentle curve of your smile and the way the air sparkles when you’re around.” I draw myself closer. “In the night’s tapestry, I would know you as a star or as a bloom in a field of flowers. Did you know there is a particular cadence to your heartbeat? Especially when you’re around me. I could pick it out in a symphony.”

even if there was nothing left of me but shadows, I would know you.”

I cannot keep away from you any more than the tides can resist the pull of the moon.

“Love is an endless sea, and in its depths, I find your strength.”

“I’m going to find the biggest treasure in all the world,” I’d proclaimed to Felix, riding back against a red-stained sky. Now, many, many years later, I know I have the greatest treasure of all, wrapped in my arms.