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Damn the pretending. Damn the hiding. Damn everything but him and us and this moment where I need him.
In love with a girl I’d have bowed to long before she became my queen.
“You’re a damn cockroach, Princess.”
“We both know it will take more than a locked door to keep me from you.”
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep.” “It’s not promises I care to keep—it’s you.”
His words never fail to have my stomach flipping, heart fluttering, lips falling silent.
“So bow at my feet with a sneer, if you must. I won’t see it with your face to the ground.”
Pretend that the Enforcer hadn’t tried to free me before our trek to the castle. Pretend our time spent together didn’t bring us impossibly closer. Pretend he isn’t the fate I foolishly hoped to earn.
They are a pretty pair, the Azer brothers. And I have the rest of my life to spend with them. Married to one and in love with the other.
“You can’t leave me. I don’t have enough room in my heart for the both of you.”
in my experience, there is love. And there is duty. But there is never both.”
“There is love within duty, and duty within love. You can’t have one without the other, and yet”—she takes a deep breath, her gaze distant—“you can never truly have both. So choose, Kai Azer. The girl. Or power. And whether or not she is worth the destruction of everything you are.”
“Don’t fear power. Wield it. Perhaps even let it control you.” The queen smiles sharply. “Being an Ordinary is not what makes you weak. It’s your heart.”
“Your arrogance is astounding as always, Kai.” “Thank you.” I cut him a glance. “That wasn’t a compliment.” “Then don’t say my name, and I won’t thank you for the sound.”
“Damn fate, and duty, and every other word meant to keep us apart.” Tears slip from those blue eyes I would happily drown in. “I want to hide with you beneath the willow tree. You are the secret I will spend the rest of my life keeping.”
Every beast can be defeated. A creature. A Trial. A king.
I am more than his shadow. I am a moth to his flame.
“Paedyn, I love you. Like nothing else before, I love you. And I’ve been waiting to tell you since I realized your eyes are my favorite color and your freckles the only constellation worth looking at. I could lie—say that you’ve stolen my every thought and heartbeat like the thief you are, but all of me was already yours. Pae, you are my inevitable.”
“You are my inevitable. In death, and in love.” “And you are mine.”
“I love you, Malakai. I love you.” I
“Take care of her for me,” she whispers atop his pale skin. “Take care of her, Mak.” I almost don’t hear her final, broken whisper. “See you in the sky.”
We are inevitable. We are tragedy.
“Bury me…” Kitt takes several shallow breaths. Then he smiles. “Under the willow tree. I… I won’t be lonely there.”
“Love each other for me.”
“Good.” My rough palms graze the sides of her neck. “Because I love you, Paedyn Gray. And I will happily spend the rest of my life trying to deserve you.”
“I love you,” she says, suddenly stern. “And I will spend the rest of my life shouting it until even Astrum hears, because it is Death who should fear me if he ever tries to take you away.”
“At the end of a blade, I would love you. Until it pierced my throat, I would say ‘yes’ to you.”
A soft light above startles the dead beneath. Kitt squints up at it, finding two shimmering dots among the sheet of nothingness. They wink down at him like stars plucked from the sky above Ilya. “Hello, Kitt,” a light says softly. It’s a female voice, as warm and bright as the glow she emits.
