Every Spiral of Fate (This Woven Kingdom, #4)

by Tahereh Mafi

Her beauty was its own violence, assailing his worn defenses even as chains of pain released him at her approach. She was like a panacea for all that ailed him, a braid of light and fury, the cause and the cure.

“Murderers are notorious scoundrels! One trait inevitably begets the other!” “By that logic,” Alizeh pointed out, “all scoundrels are also murderers.” “And what scoundrel hasn’t killed a woman’s soul?”

Heaven help him. It was an exercise of strength simply to hold her name in his mind.

When she moved, he fought to remain still; when she breathed, he wanted to draw breath. Every aspect of him was now tuned precisely to her; and like a compass searching for true north, he felt frenzied when she was out of sight. In her absence he felt pushed to the very edge of lunacy; in her presence he felt unhinged. The mere sight of her sent his pulse pounding with a speed that scared him.

It would be simpler for him to lay down and die for her than to try to convey the enormity of all that he felt in her presence.

Night after night she would remove her clothes and slit his throat with her smiles.

Her radiance was staggering; her beauty unfathomable.

My life, my heart, my blood—they’re already yours. Heaven knows I have nothing left to give you that isn’t already in pieces.”

“I will say this once, angel, for I feel you should be warned. No man alive has ever loved a woman the way that I love you, and I would rather die, damned as I am, than disgrace us both with the pitiful, unrequited performance of my heart.”