More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
For those fearless enough to follow their heart
“Every brutal act is born of love.”
Death is the only constant in my life, like an old friend who hones every one of my dark secrets into a weapon. He calls me weak and all I hear is Ordinary. He calls me doomed and all I hear is an earnest promise. His is the hand my bloody fingers reach for because there is comfort in his imminence.
powerless
Because this fate may prove to be worse than Death himself.
“And if we wish for our great kingdom to remain, we will welcome Ordinaries back into it.”
it will take quite the gesture of goodwill from Ilya to prompt peace. I’m swaying on my feet again. That gesture of goodwill is me.
I thought I’d known torment until it wrapped around her finger. No, torment is tangible, and it gleams atop her tanned skin. I stare, unblinking, at the symbol my brother slid onto her finger. It is binding. It is infinite. It is my undoing. A laugh threatens to slip past my numb lips. It’s not as though she hadn’t promised to be my ruin, hadn’t already become my demise. She is the single most destructive thing I have ever desired, and yet, it is the diamond on her finger that will destroy me.
In love with a girl I’d have bowed to long before she became my queen.
I’ve been nothing but willing when it comes to drowning in those ocean eyes. But now, I can’t fathom drowning if she is not the anchor I’m sinking with.
I would spend the rest of my days making her flower crowns if she wanted to be a queen. My queen. Not Kitt’s. Not Ilya’s. Mine.
“I am no one’s queen.” “Is that so?” My fingers find her cheek before trailing down the smooth slope of her nose. “Then you have no idea how much power you hold over me.” “You seem to forget that I’m completely powerless, Prince.” Her words hold an edge, as though her breath has become a blade she drags along my neck. “So be my weakness, then.”
“You’re not supposed to touch me at all.” “But you could command me to,” I drawl. “Then I’d simply be following an order.”
Powerless. Fatherless. Adena-less. These were the things I was already struggling to survive. And yet, it’s the ring on my finger that may be the death of me.
Paedyn is not a right or a wrong, not something as simple as a yes or a no. She is confusion itself, a feeling unplaced, a color between black and white. Hell, she is my Silver Savior. And hating her is not as simple as it may seem. But for me, it is not loving her that has proven to be difficult.
Maybe I’m even jealous of the ring. Jealous of the way it clings to her skin, feels every shiver of her body. Because that should be me.
But even the strongest of ties wear over time. It will be the slow death of us, spending every day alongside each other but never truly together.
Our marriage will be nothing more than a political union, but if we are meant to spend the rest of our lives together, I hope to restore some semblance of the friendship we once had. That is, if he even wants it.
“If you wish to lose your tongue, by all means, continue speaking over your king.”
“I will not have my judgment questioned, nor my future lineage. If the heir to my throne possesses less power, then so be it. That is a small price to pay for a thriving kingdom.”
Every death I’ve doled lives in the lines of these hands. And I fear who will find themselves beneath their next calloused touch.
“Privacy?” His chuckle skitters up my spine, awakening my sleepy senses. “Darling, I’d be in this bed beside you if my brother hadn’t slipped a ring onto your finger.”
“The problem wouldn’t be taking that ring off. It would be getting me to put it back on.”
I am betrothed to the king, and yet, my heart beats for his brother.
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep.” “It’s not promises I care to keep—it’s you.”
Love and paranoia are quite fond of each other, habitually mingling into a suffocating protection.
“The people want to send you back into your own Trials.”
“So bow at my feet with a sneer, if you must. I won’t see it with your face to the ground.”
“So damn the Trials. Pae, let me force every person in this kingdom to their knees for you.”
“You already have Kai. Why bother deepening our relationship?” My heart thuds against a constricted chest. Silently cursing this damn dress, I manage a breathy, “Kai is not who I’m marrying.” “But he wishes you were.”
“Where else would I be?” “Your own room, maybe?” “My room doesn’t have you in it.” My lips twitch. “Hence why I’m in yours.”
“Don’t do that,” I breathe. “Do what?” I duck my head. “Ruin me.” “I thought that is what you wanted?” she reminds me slyly. “Not like this.” I tuck a damp strand of hair behind her ear. “Not with him.”
“But you have both left very different marks on my heart. One an O, and the other something even more damning.”
“Every person who has ever said that to me is gone. And I… I need you more than I need those words.”
I’d live the rest of my life at the end of a blade. So long as she is the one holding it.
Today, Paedyn’s Trial will consist of retrieving her crown from the crypt she is buried in.”
Perhaps in another life, I learn to love him from afar. And that is the most fearless thing of them all.
“I thought you might not walk through those doors tonight. And it made me realize that I’d much rather spend the rest of my life apart from you, watching at a distance, than without you.”
“If you look like hell,” he whispers with a sly grin, “then I’m fortunate to be going there.”
“Pae.” His voice is ragged. “I would lose my life for you before finding something else worth living for.” His fingers weave into my hair, slide along the back of my neck. “You are my inevitable. In life and in death.”
“She is powerless.”
I’m breathless at the sight of her, doomed by the hope of having her. It’s a beautiful ruin, a devastating devotion. This girl holds my heart in her hands, could crush it between her fingers and still have me thanking her for the touch.
“It has been said that the Plague may have even altered… animals. There are stories of enhanced creatures—bigger, faster, stronger than before. Because of that, many believe there to be some creature living in the Shallows.”
But I am no stranger to drowning. I’ve been doing just that since the day I looked into her ocean eyes.
“I’m sensing that we may end up in the sea before even spotting land.” He smiles, and suddenly, the frigid water starts to seem like a good idea. “Then I’ll swim for the both of us.”
My name means nothing to me until she speaks it. Nothing until she claims it as her own.
An Ordinary born of two powerful Elites is unheard of. Yet, here she is, this weak excuse for life.
“It killed my wife,” Edric says coolly. “An Ordinary killed my wife. Get rid of it.”
“What you saw today did not happen. Your queen did not die giving birth to an Ordinary, because she passed two years ago when delivering me my son and heir. That is what the kingdom will know. That is what history will know.”
“I’ll die before seein’ an Ordinary sit on Ilya’s throne.” My sword plunges into his heart at the same moment he throws Paedyn over the railing.
