And I Darken (The Conqueror's Saga, #1)

by Kiersten White

“On our wedding night,” she said, “I will cut out your tongue and swallow it. Then both tongues that spoke our marriage vows will belong to me, and I will be wed only to myself. You will most likely choke to death on your own blood, which will be unfortunate, but I will be both husband and wife and therefore not a widow to be pitied.”

Anger carved away everything else inside—doubt, fear, embarrassment—leaving room for nothing else. She never felt more powerful than when she was angry with a sword in her hands.

With knife-sharp clarity, her own feelings of powerlessness and loneliness since being taken from Wallachia rose within her breast. How, then, must it feel to want a someone as much as she wanted a something, and to know that someone would never want you? “I am sorry,” she said, unmoving and emotionless because she did not know how to express what she understood.

“I think of you like a sister,” he said. “Like a brilliant, violent, occasionally terrifying sister that I would follow to the ends of the earth, in part because I respected her so much and in part because I feared what she would do to me if I refused.” She nodded. “I would do awful things.” Nicolae laughed. “The most awful.” “And then I would steal your horse lover, to spite you.” “Your cruelty knows no bounds.”

“Souls and thrones are irreconcilable.”