Serpent & Dove (Serpent & Dove, #1)

by Shelby Mahurin

“You’re my wife now, whether we like it or not. No man will ever touch you that way again.”

Lou glared at him. “I like you, Ansel, but this had better be something good. Emilie and Alexandre just had a moment, and I swear if they don’t kiss soon, I will literally die.”

With my death, the king’s line also would’ve died. All his heirs, legitimate and bastard, would’ve ceased breathing with me. One life to end a hundred years’ worth of persecution. One life to end the Lyons’ reign of tyranny.

not urge me to leave you or turn back from you.’” He trailed his fingers down my arm in slow, torturous strokes. My head fell back on his shoulder, my eyes fluttering closed, as his lips continued to move against my neck. “‘Where you go, I will go. Where you stay, I will stay.’”

C’est cela l’amour, tout donner, tout sacrifier sans espoir de retour. That is love, to give away everything, to sacrifice everything, without the slightest desire to get anything in return. —Albert Camus

“Of course I do not love you, Louise. You are the daughter of my enemy. You were conceived for a higher purpose, and I will not poison that purpose with love. With your birth, I struck the Church. With your death, I strike the crown. Both will soon fall.”

If this agony was love, perhaps Morgane was right. Perhaps I was better off without it.

Would my soul remember him? A small part of me prayed I wouldn’t, but the rest knew better. I loved him. Deeply. Such a love was not something of just the heart and mind. It wasn’t something to be felt and eventually forgotten, to be touched without it in return touching you. No . . . this love was something else. Something irrevocable. It was something of the soul.