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Sylvia had the power to make the most careful man in the kingdoms reckless.
His first instinct when he saw her wasn’t to reach for his blade or summon the guards. It was to shout run.
Marek’s lifelong trouble was this: unless someone stopped him, he was liable to find himself on track to be expeditiously murdered.
The way he looks at you sometimes. Like you are a cliff with a fatal fall, and each day you move him closer to its edge.
I wished I could look away, but in a room of beautiful things, Arin of Nizahl outshined them all.
Thank the Awaleen he and that girl were on the same side.
“I am his blood, but I am no one’s daughter.”
“I am not one for pointless musings, Suraira, but I am starting to wonder if whoever built my skull built it for the express purpose of surviving you.”
They do not get to take her from me.
“Sweet Sirauk,” she swore. “How are you still conscious?” “I told… you.” Arin was acutely aware that he would soon succumb to the blood loss. “I was built… to survive you.” “Survive a little less effectively, please.”
“Do not toy with me. This—this is the last piece of my heart I have left, do you understand? I don’t know how to protect it once it is outside my body. If I trust you and then you cast it into the dirt, it will be the death of both of us. What is left of me will kill what is left of you.”
“There is no if you survive. There is no future where it is my hand that ends your life.” This close, I could make out the austere lines of anguish twining around his rage. “If your magic takes you, I will drag you back. It cannot have you.”
I’m so sorry, I wanted to whisper. I am so sorry I did this to you. I never meant to drag you into my wreckage. I never expected you to stay.
He was the single most beautiful thing I had ever laid hands upon, and I was not good at treating the beautiful things in my life gently.
“Yes,” Arin said. “I choose her.”
Marek’s most reliable offensive strategy was turning into a golden-haired beam of charm,
I exhaled, belatedly noticing I had crushed the pomegranate seeds in my fist. Ugh. I reached around Jeru to wipe the sticky red mess on the back of Marek’s shirt.
“I swear my loyalty to Jasad’s Malika.” I couldn’t breathe. “Everything I have is hers to command. What she wills, I will create. What she hates, I will destroy. I am the weapon of the Malika, and it is her alone I pledge myself to.”
“Friendly? Awaleen below, I would give my left leg for friendly. I would even accept affectionate. Essiya, it is impossible to watch you two and not recognize how deeply in love you are.”
“Any advantage of experience I might have evaporates the minute you touch me, Suraira.” His voice was firm. “Since it seems I have been less than clear: the advantage is yours. You unravel me utterly.”
The fate of traitors lies in the hands of the betrayed.” “Hand,” Arin said. “What?” “He only has one hand. I took the other.”
“I will never sit on the Jasad throne,” Arin said. “The Jasad crown will belong to my wife, and my wife alone.”
To keep my head above water and remember it all. Fairel’s laugh. The smell of Rory’s favorite mint tea brewing on a foggy morning. Sefa’s dazed giggles when she’d been working on a project for five hours straight without blinking. Marek’s endless chatter whenever I grew moody and sullen, too stubborn to leave me alone and too restless to stay quiet.
