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To the difficult girls who built their armor early.
I marveled at the frequency with which this man hid a blade on his person.
“When death lives around the corner, you learn to pay no attention to its shadow.
“It may be an unfamiliar concept to you, but you do this remarkable trick with books where you open them.”
If they couldn’t truly touch each other, this approximation of it… the intimacy of this violence between them almost sufficed. It almost satisfied the hunger that sparked at the base of Arin’s spine as she pushed a lock of his hair away from the seeping wound near his cheekbone and murmured, “Just your skull?” Her hair had come loose around her, black curls spilling around her strong shoulders, and she leveled a dagger against Arin’s heart. “Not the rest of you?”
“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.” The blows began again.
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.
I understand how easy it is to dwell in the aftermath of all your worst fears. To spend every day bracing for tomorrow’s pain. But, Essiya, you can’t survive in the future. You don’t exist there yet,”
You are not to blame for being planted in poisonous soil, Arin. Our choices come when we realize what we have grown into; when we look at the world around us and recognize our role in it. Only then, when you decide whether you will grow roots or tear yourself free, can you be truly held to account.”
What is so special about your soul that it must always remain perfectly pristine? Souls are made to be marked. To fracture and break. We spend lifetimes repairing them, and by the time you go to your grave, your soul should look nothing like what you started with.”
Death, he learned, did not change anything. It didn’t destroy their home; it simply barred Arin from entering. It meant years waiting on the steps.
It had taken Arin too long to recognize that the best parts of his life existed in the almost. They existed here—beyond the reach of certainty, on the outskirts of doubt, swaying over the cliff of catastrophe.
