Shadow Princess (Zodiac Academy, #4)

by Caroline Peckham

“You’re what I latch onto to bring me back from the shadows.”

He was still all the things I hated about him, but he was also my own personal brand of hell. And I’d been sinning for a long time, waiting for him to punish me.

“Do you have any idea how much I want her? How much it feels like I need her sometimes? It’s like she’s burrowed her way beneath my flesh and taken root in the depths of my soul. I hunger for her and ache for her and for the briefest moment, it felt like maybe she felt the same. Like all the anger and hatred between us had just been covering up everything else we desired. Like just maybe I could have something good like that, something pure and honest and just…mine.”

“Because if you’re going to drown then I’m going to drown with you.”

Don’t be with him because we were together once. For one, too brief, earth-shattering moment, you were mine. And I never should have let you go.

Because my life was empty before I loved her.

“Because you’re in my head all the time. You pulse through my blood with each beat of my heart. I live for every scrap of attention you offer me and suffer through every moment you spend ignoring me,”

“I want you to feel for me. And I’ll take hate if that’s all you’re offering.”

I’d never taken anything for myself like this before. Never had something purely because it was the deepest desire of my heart. But that was what she was.

“I mean, like the way I lie awake at night, remembering what it felt like to hold you in my arms. How still the world felt, how pure that moment was between us. How I imagine I can still smell your perfume as my eyes fall closed and how I reach across my bed in the night wishing you were really there. Or like the way my heart beats harder when you walk into a room and my throat thickens when I try to think of the right things to say to you. How I fight to get your attention in any way I can because I can’t bear it when you ignore me.”