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Kindle Notes & Highlights
“How can I be substantial if I do not cast a shadow? I must have a dark side also if I am to be whole.” —C.G. Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul “Hurts Like Hell”—Fleurie “Castle”—Halsey “Nocturne”—Blanco White “Don’t Forget About Me”—CLOVES “Wasting My Young Years”—London Grammar “Waiting Game”—BANKS “La Traviata / Act 1: Libiamo ne’lieti calici”—Verdi “Killer + The Sound”—Phoebe Bridgers & Noah Gundersen “Primavera”—Ludovico Edinaudi “Addicted”—Jon Vinyl “Go Fuck Yourself”—Two Feet “The Night We Met”—Lord Huron “Start A War”—Klergy & Valerie Broussard “To Build A Home”—Cinematic Orchestra
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I still had the taste of my wife on my tongue, sweat on my face, and my father’s blood on my fist. Fury had turned me heathen, and I didn’t give a single fuck.
To see her was to want her, to know her at all was to be enamoured by her. I’d bought her as a weapon to use against my enemies, and she’d become the ultimate tool for my destruction.
It was appropriate that her name meant beauty of the cosmos because, to me, that was exactly what she embodied. The beauty of all living things.
“You married me, Xan,” I said, my words landing like soft blows. “You once told me that if you ever felt moved to marry, it would be because you wanted to give your future wife your protection and the promise of your undying love. You said you would always care about her, about me, no matter what happened.”
“Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak.”
“I told you once before, my beauty,” he sneered. “Even a predator is prey to something. I had things to take care of before I could reclaim you, but now you’ve forced my hand. I will not have you with another man. Not even if my body was cold and dead in the ground, would you belong to someone other than me.”
“You are my wife, for better or worse, and I’m coming for you, Cosima, to inaugurate you at my side where you belong. You can run,” he taunted, angling his nose along the line of my throat before sinking his teeth into my neck on either side of my jugular. “But I think we’ve proven that I’ll always find you.”
“You told me I would have to earn your submission again, but that’s not the truth, is it, my beauty? I need to earn your trust again, your tenderness, and your depthless heart. But your submission? Ah, that is intrinsically mine. The way the moon owns the tide and the sun owns the sky.”
“This is who you are,” he whispered into my ear, tracing the gold thorns around my throat so that I shivered. “Not just a slave, a trinket to own and flaunt and punish, but my slave, my topolina, a woman so beautiful it makes me ache. A warrior so powerful Joan and Artemis would shudder at your feet. Do you know how it makes me feel to make you sweat and cum and cry? It makes me feel like a god, fierce enough to deserve you, and a peasant, wholly unworthy of such a magnificent gift.”
Was it true that whatever souls were made of, two could be constructed the very same? One heart cut into two and pressed into separate chests with the hope that one day, they would find each other.
There was no greater torture than loving a woman and being unable to have her.
“You once told me you loved me,”
“And I once promised I would take that from you; your love, your body, and your devotion. I’m a man of my word, Cosima. I’ve come to take what you’ve always wanted to give me.”
“I’ve wanted to give you everything since nearly the moment I laid eyes on you so beautiful and brave. Do you know what it is like for a man used to power and spoils when he is helpless to keep and worship the one thing he wants most?”
“If I had a heart, Cosima, I know I would love you with every facet of it,” he breathed with almost violent tenderness, his hands so painful in my hair and his eyes so wonderfully tender on my skin my heart didn’t stand a chance against the contrast. “But I was born without one, and I don’t know if something like that can grow in a man like me. If it could, I know it would for you.”
“You are mine, topolina,” he vowed with the same solemnity he had spoken his vows at our wedding. “I know this because everyone is a slave to something, and I am enslaved by you.”
“Wherever you are, however far away for whatever length of time, I’m yours.”
“The best kind of dreams worth dreaming are terrifying in their enormity,”
“Before, I gave you the protection of my name,” he whispered, the words so sacred they felt hushed and as reverent as a prayer spoken in a holy place. “But now, I give you my whole heart and hope that you will let me prove to you every day from here on out, that I am worthy of yours in return.”
“Il mio cuore è tuo,”
My heart is yours.
