The Lightning-Struck Heart (Tales From Verania, #1)

by T.J. Klune

I made them out of the tears of a succubus and a lightning-struck tree stump I found under the Winter Moon.

as my face collided with a chest undoubtedly built from pieces of my dreams, and a surprised grunt that fell from lips that angels themselves must have had a hand in creating.

I had wished upon them as a child and had wished upon them as an adult. It was upon these stars that I had rested my hopes and dreams, my anger and frustrations. I wished because as a child, that’s what you’re supposed to do. You don’t know any better. I wished because as an adult, sometimes you don’t know what else to do. You know better, but you don’t care.

I wish I could find that one person made for me so that way I can show them why I was made for them.

“It’s okay,” the priest assured me. “I’m pretty sure your soul is already doomed.” “There’s the idolatry I know and avoid.”

“If anything, I am the sunlight in your otherwise darkened world. I bring you the light to chase away the maelstrom that is your soul.”

“But I let you grow. In the world of men. Where they are cold and careless and plot the most calculating plots they can to ensure their survival. They think only for themselves and not about the suffering of others. You see, Sam, it’s only about power.”

“Chaos always rises from complacency.

There are moments in your life so profound, so extraordinarily crystal clear that even the remembrance of them is enough to feel like you’re being consumed by fire. Moments that might not mean much to anyone else, but mean the world to you.

There was an anger in him, then. That the hearts of men could be so dark that they could not see the beauty of the creatures before them.

‘Don’t be a jerk, dude. You don’t have the right to take away something that makes other people happy.’

It was rage and base desires. It was anger and sadness and despair and desperation, but it was honest. It beat with a corrupted, diseased heart, but it wore it on its sleeve and made no excuses for what it was.

“Life is about chances. Unless you take them, you’ll never know what they could bring.”

“Nothing difficult was ever won while staying sane,”

“Love is an amazing thing. It can move armies. It can destroy people. It can cause even the mightiest of us to fall to our knees in supplication. It’s terrifying and wonderful, and if you let it, it can be the greatest thing in the world.”

I wondered if the gods had chosen to honor me this day for any world where you exist must truly be a blessing.”

“Do you often make demands of your gods? Is that what you think they’re there for? For humans like you to lay your burdens upon them, to do as you ask, and if they don’t, you doubt them? Tell me, woman. Is that what you are asking? Of a god?”

Morgan could teach me magic. My parents could teach me morals. Gary and Tiggy could teach me brotherhood. But Mama taught me that while life had sharp edges, it would only cut you if you allowed it to.

They all watched me with wide eyes. They weren’t afraid, but it was close. There isn’t much distance between curiosity and fear.

“Someone who will love your hair and your words and your eyes and the way you still scrunch up your nose when you’re thinking hard on something. He will love you for all of the things that you are and all of the things you aren’t. He’ll love you beyond all reason and will be convinced that you hung the sun and moon. He will see the stars and wish for only you. Someone will love every single part of who you are, and my gods, I can’t wait for the day to meet him to tell him thank you.”

The smile that formed then was as wide as I’d ever seen it. It was like getting hit in the face with a puppy made of ice cream and good dreams.