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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Liv Zander
Read between
November 15 - November 18, 2025
I pressed my tongue against the blade. With a determination that returned some of my pride, I slid it upward, slowly, languidly. It burned. Burned so nicely, only to gradually fade into a pleasant after chill as iron seasoned my mouth.
But the way his shadows had seeped from his skin as though Galantia was already writhing beneath him…? How he’d stared down at her, so spellbound, he hadn’t even seen Lorn coming? That shit would turn Domren’s betrothed into a corpse before I had a piece of her.
If there was one thing that got him harder than tormenting a woman, it was tormenting a woman who might actually like it.
“Don’t act angry with me when you’re actually angry with yourself. Don’t call me a liar just because you don’t like the sound of the truth. You liked it. No need to be embarrassed about it because, sweet thing…” a lap of my tongue at her earlobe, “so did we.”
What would it feel like to be loved with such intensity? Such unequivocal fortitude that not even death could impose conditions? I wanted to experience such a love so badly…
Someone so cruel shouldn’t be quite so attractive…
We’re all a bit broken here.
“Delos’ta lay.” “Yes.” That had been the title of the book in the library Malyr had wanted to read. “What does it mean?” “It means The Endless Ache. Right in here, remember?” A tap against his chest. “It’s where our anoa longs for our fated mate, to a point it can be physically painful.”
“It’s not like I get to fuck you the way I want.”
“Because you’re mine. Mine to hurt. Mine to agonize. Mine to break.” His cool, minty breath broke against my skin, sending a shudder across my heated body. “I will come for you, Galantia. May it take a year or a lifetime, I will come for you.” “And then?” “Then I will shatter you into a million pretty pieces.” His lips brushed over my temple, shifting my thin wisps of hair. “But instead of leaving you wrecked and ruined, I’ve decided that I will put you back together in my grotesque image. Will take your pain and pleasure, your tears and blood, your moans and screams, so I may put you back
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“You’re sick.” “So are you, Galantia.” A whisper against my earlobe, “Because we both know that you will like it.”
“No matter how much you want to hate me, it’ll never measure up to the loathing my father clearly harbors for me. You think you rendered me worthless? Don’t flatter yourself, Malyr. I was born worthless.”
“I will forever treasure you,”
“I will forever care for you.”
I will forever provide for you.”
“Fated only to end in emotional tragedy.”
“As it should. As it ought to. Anything other than that, Galantia, would be too great a betrayal to my family, no matter my personal… affliction.”
“I will forever fly with you.”
“I will forever protect our young. And I would never, ever let my unborn child get anywhere near your father.”
“People can still see the scars.” Galantia put the brush down. “They will be invisible to those who truly love you.”
“The time a man has to wait before he can kill his enemy is well spent between the legs of his enemy’s betrothed, don’t you agree?” His eyes found mine once more, one cheek bunching up at his lopsided smirk. “Or his daughter.”
“I am no longer Domren’s betrothed.” “No, indeed not. You are mine now.”
“Why?” I asked. “Why watch me?” “Presume it is something as simple as the fact that you are beautiful,” he said. “Except when you fight me… then you are stunning.”
“And if you run from it this time? Little dove, there will only be one set of arms left to run into. Mine.”
“I need this marriage if I want to win this war quickly and with few losses among my kind, Galantia. We both need it. And it is my hope that this will ease your fear and convince you of my sincerity. My… commitment to this.”
“When I fed you from my lips, little dove. It is the kiss of the raven, but a kiss nonetheless, reserved for our mate and no one but her. It is why we guard them so.”
A reminder that, if I looked too deeply into his shadows, I might as well lose my balance and fall straight into their darkness to swallow me whole.
“Little dove, the wrong ones we kiss are considered, but the ones we never bother to kiss…? They are forever rejected.”
“The longer you make me look at you, little dove, the harder it is for me to remember what you are. And I fear that, if I look too long… I just might forget who you are."
“Because you’re my little dove, astonishingly beautiful, so fucking perfect with how I can strangle you to within inches of fainting and make you come all the harder for it.”
“See, little dove, the only way I can possibly reconcile how much I want you, long for you, find myself annoyingly drawn to you like to no woman before in my life… a Brisden, no less,” fingernails dug into the scar tissue on my chest, straining the puckered skin until it ached, “is by hurting you just a little bit more.”
The ardor that radiated from it seemed incongruous against it, yet it was there, a shimmer of love beneath the shadows of pain.
It was an odd sensation, as if he was saying I love hurting you and I hate that I hurt you all at once, his touch the most delicious contradiction.
“My father was a… a harsh man, and my mother his soft counterpart. Fate always makes it so, creating the perfect bond that runs deeper than death.”
“Damn you, Galantia,” he snapped, gliding one warm hand up to my throat, giving a single squeeze in warning. “Don’t make me hurt you even more tonight.” I forced down a swallow, bracing for impending pain before I leaned forward with the next roll of my pelvis, letting my throat sink deeper into the ache of his knuckles. “Then hurt me. Hurt me… but look at me.”
“Maybe we are truly fated only to end in emotional tragedy…” “Little dove,” his whisper came with a salty kiss to my lips before he straightened and placed his own by my ear, “love is tragedy.” I hate that I love you.
“Maybe you need to rethink your punishments and stop making them sound like rewards.”
“See, there is no love for you here—not from me, not from him. There is no love for you anywhere.” Malyr leaned into me, letting his tongue lap a trail along my cheek, devouring my tears all the way to the corner of my eye, where he suckled and finished with a kiss. “I told you I would break you like your father had done it with me, little white dove. And, oh, how delicious your tears are.”
