More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
“Lie down,” she told him. “With one word, I could have you impaled.” “Impale me yourself!”
He bent to hook an arm under her knees, lifting her into his arms as easily as if she were a child, and carried her to the bed. He told her not to speak or look at him. He told her not to try to kiss him. He told her she was beautiful. Then he lay her down and lay beside her and he said nothing more.
“Then let them go.” He caressed her shoulder and, when that had no effect, gripped it suddenly and pulled her onto her back, looming over her with his face too close and his eyes too bright. “You owe them nothing. They can give you nothing. What can it profit you to play this childish game? Leave them to their fate.” His voice softened, roughened. “Give yourself to me and I will give you all the world.”
“And that’s all that’s stopping me, is it? The thought that I would create another mindless, tittering fool for my dead court? Were it not for that, I would have raised you up long ago, for surely I kill
all my bedmates who provide me pleasant enough sport!” “What? No! I didn’t mean…” Her voice failed and would not come all the way back in. “I thought…I thought this was what you wanted.” His head rocked back as from a slap. “You what?”
“You just said to give—” “Not your life! I’ll own no part of that! That is entirely your foolishness!” “Foolishness?” “You think you can buy the world with the promise of your body! How shall you not be a fool?” “At least I’m buying it dear,” she shot back....
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
advanced one step, only one, his eyes burning bright enough to burn colors across her sight. “You know what I want. You told me plainly enough, and whether you knew it or not, you were right. I want you.” She could only shake her head, not in defiance, but in helplessness. “I’m here, aren’t I?” “I don’t want you to be here.” He cut his arm through the air, summing up and dismissing all of Haven at once, then seized her arm and yanked her stumbling to him. He caught her chin in a rough grip, forcing her head back, making her look at him and see the way he looked at her. “I want you to be mine.”
...more
“The first night you slept in my bed…in my arms…I looked down on you as you dreamed and felt your breath on
my skin and thought how trusting you were. How foolish and fearless. How soft. And I was tempted then. I have never harmed one of those who came to my bed, never before considered it, but I touched your lips and thought how easily I might steal your breath away…and raise you up again before you ever knew you’d died.” He moved his hand over her stomach in a circle just once—she felt an odd, cold pulling sensation, as if he’d found some secret thread inside her and wound it once around his wrist—then came to rest on her hip. “And I would have you forever.”
“A small thing,” he admitted. “Lasting only a few seconds, no more. And I realized then that I have had a hundred women in that bed, but never so honest a touch. After all the years of my life, that was my best moment.” His eyes dimmed to almost perfect blackness. “Your hand on my neck.”
again. His eyes burned cold. “Tell me the truth.” “The truth?” She tried to shake free of his grip, but couldn’t and had to settle for a shrill, angry laugh. “The truth is, you deserve everything people say about you.” His head rocked back even more than when she’d slapped him.
She thrust her chin forward, twisting the knife. “You deserve everything they’ve done. Maybe you weren’t born a monster, but you sure as hell became one and monsters deserve to be hated and hunted for the rest of their lives.”
You are my Lan now, made in my image…and you can stand here all night and watch this youth’s life bleed out before you, secure in the knowledge that you never sold the last piece of your pride.”
She guessed she’d be beyond caring once she actually died, but it was taking a lot longer than she’d thought and in the meantime, it bothered her.
This didn’t feel like jealousy at all. It felt like death.
“You just thought so little of me that you believed I would fuck a stranger to pass the time while I waited to hear if you would live!”
“You’re what?” “A magician.” Lan caught Heather’s attention and asked, “Want to see me do a trick?” When the child curiously nodded, Lan turned to Deimos and said, “Captain, round up those eight bitches there and take them to France.”
“Here is where you leave me, Lan,” he whispered, stroking the smooth curve of her head the way he used to stroke her hair. “And if I were a better man, I would let you go, even where I cannot follow, to have that perfect peace I can never share. If I loved you as you surely deserve to be loved, I would bury you in some good place and set a stone above you that reads Here she lies whom God alone shall raise up. And I would grieve and go on alone.”
