Shadowfever (Fever #5)

by Karen Marie Moning

I’d lost myself. Because of him. Because of his idiotic need to keep everything about himself secret. There was no excuse for it. But even worse was this: I’d thought he’d given his life to save me, when all he’d really done was the equivalent of take a little nap. What did “dying” for someone mean when you knew you couldn’t die? Not a damn thing. An inconvenience. IYD hadn’t been a big deal after all. I’d wept, I’d mourned. I’d built a massive and utterly undeserved Monument to Barrons, The Man Who’d Died So I Could Live, in my head. I’d thought he’d made the ultimate sacrifice for me, and it had milked my emotions brutally. I’d let it consume me, take me over, turn me into someone I couldn’t believe I’d been capable of becoming. And he’d never been willing to die so I could live. It had been business as usual—Barrons keeping his OOP detector alive and functioning, coolly impersonal, focused on his goals. So what if he was the one who would never let me die? It didn’t cost him anything. He wanted the Book. I was the way to get it. He had nothing to lose. I finally understood why he was always so fearless. I’d thought he’d cared about me so much he’d been willing to give up his life. I’d romanticized it and gotten swept away in a misguided fantasy. And if he’d stayed here last night, I’d have made a complete fool of myself. I’d have confessed feelings to him that I’d felt only because I’d thought he’d given his life for mine. Nothing had changed. There was no deeper level ...