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

by Kiersten White

Lada’s eyes burned with a look the nurse had come to dread. That look meant injury, destruction, or fire. Often all three.

Vlad’s voice was as clear as a blue sky in the freezing depths of winter. The sun with teeth, they called those days.

“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.”

She liked being angry before fighting with Nicolae. 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.

Belief is weakness.”

Religion was a means to an end. She had seen it wielded as a weapon. If she needed to use it, she would, but she would never allow herself to be used by it.

She hooked her foot behind Mehmed’s ankle, then slammed her shoulder into his, tripping him and throwing him to the ground. He sputtered in outrage. “I am the son of the sultan!” She pulled the door open, slicing her sword through the air in front of his throat. “No, Mehmed, you are my friend. And I am a terrible friend.” His laughter made her steps—always purposeful and aggressive—seem almost light.

We love a Lada scene

Radu ducked under the water, his whole body smiling and infused with the warmth of a prayer of gratitude for the grace of a beautiful, safe secret and someone he loved to share it with.

HaHA that foreshadowing comes through strong now

Lada was reminded of a snake, which confused her. Women were the garden, and men were the snakes. Her nurse had explained how men and women came together in the marriage bed to her when she was very young, around the same time her religious tutors had taught her the story of Adam and Eve. The two had mixed together in her head, until it was men and their snakes that had persuaded Eve to lose her beautiful, perfect garden.

There is power in being a woman—oh yes, power in these bodies you gaze upon with derision.” Huma ran one hand down her ample breasts, over her stomach, and rested it on her hip. “When you have something someone else wants, there is always an element of power.”

“Ugh,” she muttered, tugging his hair. “You are so pretty. Like a delicate butterfly beneath my boot.” “Ugh,” he replied, pulling one of her own curls, which were thick and coarse. “You are so mad. Like a rabid hound that needs to be put down.”

She leaned back, stretching out and taking up space the way the men around her did, and grinned at her friend.

Our baddie

Sincerity betrayed her, tumbling out of her mouth in a whisper before she could rein it in.

And then her lips, from which nothing but poison had ever dropped, found his and were baptized with sweet fire, reborn into something new and wild. His mouth answered hers, lips parting, his teeth catching hers, her tongue meeting his. It felt like fighting. It felt like falling. It felt like dying.

His eyebrows formed a question or a promise—she could not tell which.

She had not had even a moment to speak with Mehmed, had not been alone with him once since the pool, since the kiss, since everything became tangled and confusing. And Mehmed smiled and laughed and sat with his slender-ankled bride, his achingly beautiful bride, leaving a charred hollow where he had ignited something deep inside Lada.

It was foolish and reckless, and that made it better. Lada wanted no careful thoughts of the future. Tonight, the future was only as long as it took him to follow her.

As much as she used her body as a tool, she had never truly appreciated skin before.

You think I am worthless? I can do things you could never dream of.”

Yes zaddyyyyy

“I am not one of you,” Lada said, her mouth right next to his ear. “I am better.”

GRATATAAAAAAA

Lada did not look back. Because part of her did trust Mehmed, more than anyone. Part of her wanted to abandon Nicolae and meet Mehmed in his rooms. To take him as a lover instead of existing in this between state that was agonizing for both of them. To accept an easy life of being his. And part of her wanted to stab him for that.