The Kiss of Deception (The Remnant Chronicles, #1)

by Mary E. Pearson

Today was the day a thousand dreams would die and a single dream would be born.

I wondered what it would be like to have someone who knew me so well, someone who would look right into my soul, someone whose very touch sent all other thoughts from my mind. I tried to imagine someone who hungered for the same things I did and wanted to spend the rest of his life with me,

I will find you … In the farthest corner … I will find you.

Or maybe I was still feeling full from knowing that sometimes I was right, that sometimes my impulsive gut might lead me into danger, but that didn’t make it any less the right direction to go.

She was trouble, that was clear, and the day she fled our wedding, I had dodged a poisonous arrow. She did me a favor. I could almost laugh at Father’s suggestion of taking a mistress after the wedding. This girl could make the whole royal court and half the king’s army regret such a decision.

“The good ones don’t run away, Lia.”

Those aren’t enough to disguise what’s inside. You’ll always be you, Lia. You can’t run from that.”

she was beautiful. It was a strange thing to think at the moment. I had deliberately avoided the thought each time I had looked at her before. I couldn’t afford such thoughts, but now the word came, unbidden, unrelenting.

That was what I both hated and loved about Rafe. He challenged me on everything I said, but he also listened intently. He listened as if every word I said mattered.

“Because ever since that first day I met you, I’ve gone to sleep every single night thinking about you, and every morning when I wake, my first thoughts are of you.”

But maybe that didn’t make it any less true. Maybe there were a hundred different ways to fall in love.

A hand came down on his shoulder, surprising us both. Rafe’s hand. “Don’t be piggish, man,” Rafe said cheerfully, with a mischievous gleam in his eyes.

It can take years to mold a dream. It takes only a fraction of a second for it to be shattered.

But I would. I’d do whatever it took to bring her back. I found her once. I would find her again.

But I knew the truth. It was nothing like that. If anyone had been bent and broken, it was me.

Maybe there was no one way to define it. Maybe there were as many shades of love as the blues of the sky.

Killing is different from thinking about killing. It takes something from you, even when it’s a suffering animal.

“Sometimes we’re all pushed to do things we thought we could never do.”