Shadow & Storms (The Legends of Thezmarr, #4)

by Helen Scheuerer

Didn’t she know that she was breaking him apart? Didn’t she know that he wouldn’t let her go anywhere without him?

‘That’s it, Thea… Eyes on me,’

‘You can give me another,’

‘You have proven time and time again that you can fight your own battles,’

‘But there are those you shouldn’t have to. Let me fight this one for you. Let me carry this burden.’

‘This is a mercy compared to what she could have done to you,’

‘Consider my fists a kindness, and know that if one more of you shows disrespect, you’re dead. Althea Embervale will turn the tide of this war. You owe her your allegiance.’

Not for the first time, he was hit with the surreal realisation that she was his, that this privilege belonged to him and him alone.

Let them see what I’d unleash on them all for her.

‘When the battle is won, I’ll be peeling this armour off piece by piece, and worshipping what I find beneath,’

‘Is that a bribe to stay alive, Princess?’

‘Eyes on me, Thea,’

‘Don’t you dare give up.’

‘I won’t let you,’

‘I won’t let you go.’

‘We are all daughters of darkness, Thea. We were born into a world of it, a place that would dictate the way in which we defend ourselves, the way we live our lives. No more. That world is no longer. And the next one will be what we make it.’

He’d ask her to be his wife, traditions be damned.