Year Four (Kingmakers, #4)

by Sophie Lark

This is the best way to appeal to him. To remind him that my mother was just as stubborn and adventurous as I am, and he loved her for it.

I don’t believe that girls hate pretty girls—they’re drawn to them, more often. But this kind of beauty is terrifying and fundamentally unfair to most people’s eyes.

“You’d never let someone slander the Hugo name! We’re mafia—we follow no law but our own. All we have is our word and our honor. If we don’t defend it, if we don’t show it matters to us . . . then no one would trust us. No business could be done.”

“There’s two kinds of men in the world,” she says. “The kind who want to hurt you . . . and the kind who want to be persuaded by you.”

It’s said that the rusalki can alter their appearance to match the tastes of the men they intend to seduce. I never believed in such a thing . . . until this moment.

I must admit . . . every time she showed me her cleverness, her ruthlessness, and that wild joy that bubbled up inside of her like an endless fountain, I thought to myself, What a child we could make, her and I. He’d rule the world.

“You look like if autumn was a person,” he says, taking one wild red curl between his thumb and index finger. “You look like if the woods came alive. And they were extremely competitive.”

She kisses me again, hungry as ever. I don’t care if this is wrong. I don’t care that I have no right. I need her, and I love her.

I slash another cord from the drapes and tie his hands just like we did to the Chancellor. “Those curtains are two hundred years old,” Hugo says, irritably. “Time for some new ones, then,” I snap.

“I want you,” I say to her. “I want your wildness. I want your passion. I want you to love me the way you love the wind and the water and the outdoors. I want you to be untamable, except by me. I want you to be my wife.”

“Our fathers shape us,” Sloane said, zipping her case. “But it’s our husbands who determine what we truly become. And us them. A couple is the sum of both of you together—as strong as you are together. As happy as you are together.”

There are crossroads in life where you can either choose the cold truth you see in front of you, or you can choose to chase the impossible dream. It’s only by believing in that dream, and pursuing it, that you can turn it into a living, breathing reality. You must chase the dream to live the dream. Otherwise, it will only ever be an ephemeral fantasy in your mind.