Bitter Burn (Lyonesse, #3)

by Sierra Simone

And now I don’t even know what the hell to do with my plan. I was supposed to care about nothing, and now I care about two things, and it’s a little fucking irritating, if I’m honest.

Levity immediately wiped away, I look down at my feet on the rock. “I feel lonely with myself, Father. I don’t like myself.” “Then that’s where you start,” he says gently. He gets to his feet. “Perhaps it might be useful to think of when you haven’t felt lonely, when you have liked yourself. When you felt like you knew your own heart, face-to-face, and not through a glass, darkly.”

watch them a moment fondly, covetously, jealous of them individually and then jealous of them together—not in an envious way but like a jealous god. I want to hoard them to myself; I want the earth to shake when anyone dares to approach what’s mine.

that I don’t know how I’m able to contain it all. How I’m not ten feet tall with it, how I don’t fill every room wall to wall and corner to corner with what I feel for them. It’s a wicked thing inside me that can’t love without also thinking mine, but I can’t love them without also thinking theirs. Theirs, theirs, theirs.

his hair tousled and damp with sweat. I stroke it away from his face, practically purring at the feel of it, thick and silken. Isolde and I held a vote, and it was democratically agreed that Tristan was only allowed to cut his hair twice a year at most. Tristan, a believer in democracy, has bowed to the will of the people, and right now his hair is long enough to curl around his ears and neck again. Perfection.