Alchemised

by SenLinYu

“You’re like a rose in a graveyard,”

The infamous Manacled quote.

“You made me feel like the parts of me that aren’t useful still deserve to exist. Like I’m not just all the things I can do.”

Damn. I felt that personally.

Women were always defined by the lowliest thing they could be called.

The blatant sexism that religious groups exhibit is so accurately represented in this.

There was a trick to sobbing like that; it was something a person had to learn to do.

I too have been there and know that trick all too well.

How could anything endure so much hurt and not learn only to bite?

There’s such a strength in gentleness after you’ve been through so much that people mistake for weakness.

“Call me, and I will come.”

The dichotomy of this sentence from the beginning of part 2…

“Being alive is not the same as living. I hope someday you’ll have a chance to realise the difference.”

Forgetting that difference is easy to do.

“Because I have warned you, if something happens to you, I will personally raze the entire Order of the Eternal Flame. That isn’t a threat, it’s a promise. Consider your survival as much a necessity to the Resistance as Holdfast’s. If you die, I will kill every single one of them. Given that the risk to their lives is the only way to make you value your own.”

This is the point where you truly realize Kaine cannot lose her.

I kill people. I order other people to kill people. I train people to kill people. I sabotage and undermine people so that they will be killed, and I do it all because of you. Every word. Every life. Because of you.”

He’s trapped just as much as she is.

someday I am going to love him in a moment that isn’t stolen.

This highlights the entirety of her life.

I love you. I love you. I love you.

Sobbing.

There aren’t any exemptions or expiration dates on always.”

The gravity of that vow is finally vocalized.

“I’m sorry—I’m sorry—I’m so sorry for everything I did to you,” he said, his voice hoarse and broken. “I love you. You left, and I’d never told you.”

I’m going to throw up😭

“We have to stop hurting ourselves for each other,” she finally said. “Both of us. We’re not going to last if this is the only way we know how to love.”

This so beautifully highlights both young and broken love.

Too much has happened to ever really put it behind us, but if you choose me, and I choose you, I think we’re strong enough to make it.”

Love is a choice, always.

“Love isn’t as pretty or pure as people like to think. There’s a darkness in it sometimes. Kaine and I go hand in hand. I made him who he is. I knew what that array meant when I saved him. If he’s a monster, then I’m his creator.”

I love when author’s tap into the unromantic side to love, the raw and real side.

She was a non-active member of the Order of the Eternal Flame and did not fight.

Immediate chills and tears.