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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
J.J. McAvoy
Read between
June 28 - June 28, 2022
Does anyone else feel as though all oxygen is being sucked from around us?
“Cinderella,” I whispered, and her head whipped back to me. She stared for a brief moment until the corner of her lips turned upward. Good, she was still in there. “Everything will be fine. You have me.”
“My name is Lady Ramona Marlowe of Bothwin.” “Lady?” Odette questioned before curtsying. “You must forgive me, Your Ladyship, I was not aware.” The girl giggled and smiled.
“She has just made that little girl’s whole year.”
I turned to the voice of the woman with mismatched eyes—one hazel, the other pure blue. She was dressed in blue, too, though it was tight, with a slight slit up the side of the thigh. “And you are?” “Sabina Franziska, former Countess of Gormsey.”
AHHHHH
“So, you are telling me you are a whore?” She did not even flinch. “I prefer the word mistress, the future king’s mistress, to be exact. And you are the future queen, and I will always remember that and stay in my place. You will barely even know I exist. To be king, to be the Adelaar is stressful. Gale needs a place, a person who helps him forget. Also, do not worry. I cannot have children. That is why he’s always felt safe with me.”
for all the trouble kylah put me through, i’ve never wanted more in my life to slap a bitch
“If my mother saw me standing here in this outfit being talked down to by some pitiful, desperate, damaged garbage of a human being like yourself, she would slap me silly. Because she told me a thousand times, there is no line in a ring.”
YESSS
But was my love killing her? That answer left me hollow.
It was then, and only then, I broke down and sobbed. I cried so hard my legs gave out, and so I knelt, and I wept.
“Because on that day, your very worst day, you will not look to me or anyone else, but you will stand and act on your own. That is the difference between children and adults, boys and men, princes and kings.”
Across from me was, of course, Sophia. She smiled, but it wasn’t as fake as it was when she first came in. And I took small comfort in that.
“He said, ‘I do not know if you are trying to help us or destroy us.’”
“I, more than anyone, know the press is lying—” “No,” she snapped, turning around to look at me, glaring furiously. “I hate you.”
“Dinner after dinner?” I smiled. We’d come to do that now. “The cherry gardens?” “It is a date.” “It’s a date.” I beamed. “Bye. Be safe.” “You too.”
“Like a tiny nuclear bomb.” “It was not that bad.” “Had me trembling in fear.” “You are so dramatic.”
“Wearing your hair as you choose?” She paused for a moment before reaching up to brush the strands back herself. “You don’t like it this way? Everyone else says it looks better straight.” “You could shave your head, and I’d still love you, Odette,” I replied, lifting her chin and forcing her to look at me. “I just want you to love you too.”
“The secret is to lean on your strengths when you can and others when you cannot. Or at least, that has worked for me.”
“But we will know more than yesterday. You and the palace have guarded her like a precious jewel. Of course, we are a bit curious to see her on her own now.”
“Congratulations, Your Highness,” Horvath said as he shook my hand. “She has won their hearts...at least for today.” That was it. That was why I was stunned. They loved her.
“When was the last time you had your period?” I dropped the toothbrush and toothpaste from my hands, staring at her wide-eyed in the reflection of the mirror. She stared back. Snip went all those wedding dress sketches. God, save me from the queen because she is going to kill me.
“With pleasure. It reeks of death in here anyway,” I snapped before exiting, slamming the door behind me. There Iskandar was still waiting. Brother, forgive me.
i don’t know if i should laugh or not 🧍🏽♀️
I stared at them for a second before slowly taking it. Could you take aspirin when you were pregnant? I’m not pregnant, just stressed!
Stepping forward, I stared at the crown that was now on the gravel. It had fallen off Odette’s head and to the ground. I had seen her face. I’d seen her collapse, and I’d seen her get into the ambulance on a stretcher. Yet it never occurred to me. It never hit me. Only at seeing her crown on the ground did I realize—
DAMMIT
“She lost the child.” I froze. So did he for a moment. “What child?”
noooooo 😖🥺
Gale slowly walked up to the bed, and being safely behind the doors with only her in front of him, he fell to his knees, weeping.
Normally, I hated how easily I came to tears, but when I saw Thelma—the bear, the female warrior of warriors—standing across from me and towering over me, with eyes glazed over as well, it made it easier for me to let the tears fall.
🥺🥺🥺🥺 pls no more no more
“You did well by being there,” he added. “You saved her life. Like a true guard.”
“One hundred percent pure peanut abstract was added to her soup—only hers.”
OH REALLY?
“Someone poisoned her,” Gale stated instead. “I believe so, sir.” “So, we are back to poisoning royals?” he muttered to Iskandar, slowly putting his arms behind his back.
go get’em
“No one but her doctors, our family, and Wolfgang may enter her room. No. One.”
“He’s going to kill them,” Thelma spoke up. I looked at her. “What?” “He’s leaving because he can’t do anything for her here,” she explained. “He’s going back. He’s calm because he’s on a mission to find and kill them for this.”
GETEM GALE
“Did you know she was pregnant, Mother?” “I didn’t. I questioned Gelula, and she said they suspected this morning, but Odette took a test late this afternoon, and it was negative.”
Yes, there was a shift. He was no longer playing the role of the future king. He was being the king.
i love this shift
“You said everyone who knew, outside of Wolfgang and myself, were either family or passed in the accident, correct?”
👀
Arthur was dead because of me. Because I had called, crying because I had lost our child. He was trying to come back to me, and he died. I had lost everything in one day.
I swallowed and exhaled the name like the curse it would be. “Mr. Ambrose.”
i figured it out w you
“Why did no other personal secretary have the night off except Wolfgang, sir?” I paused. “What?”
“Forgive me, ma’am, but our country is at stake. I do not understand how you do not understand. We are being overrun by these—”
Without knocking, I entered to see him lying peacefully on his bed, even snoring slightly. The whole palace was collapsing, and he was sleeping soundly. Completely free of all obligations, duties...pains. There was no turning to him. It was just me.
“You will get to a point where all of the world seems to be pressing on your neck, and you feel utterly defeated.” “I am there, Father. I am at that point.”
“There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen.”
This was not him. He was lost again.
“What right do I have to go after her, Iskandar? What can I tell her? I could not even protect her in my home. The most senior, most trusted man—the man I entrusted her to tried to kill her. Oh no, let me correct that. He did not wish to kill her; he simply wished for her to lose our child, and she did. He wanted her to leave, and now she is. I left her with a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and now I should run and ask her to trust me again? What fucking right do I have? I can offer her nothing but stress and fear. I cannot protect her, Iskandar!” He slammed his wrist hard on the desk, and
...more
“GUYS!” “WHAT, ORIEN?” they both yelled at him, and I sort of pitied the poor kid.
All I could do was shrug. “I don’t know if I want to be the queen.”
Oh, dear God. I sounded like one of those holiday specials we’d all heard a thousand times, preaching clichés to the youth.
“I hate him, and I hope they give him the death penalty. Can that be my official statement?” “Sir, the death penalty was prohibited as of fifty years ago.”
To my dearest and most beloved Odette, How they have slandered you. How they have insulted and belittled and harmed you. You who have done nothing but love me for me. You who makes me laugh and write poor poetry. You who held on to me when my brother died and let me weep before picking me off the ground. I do not understand them—those who hate you. They explain, and still, I cannot understand them. They cannot be doing it for my sake because they have to see how happy I was and am with you. I do not know what to do. My heart wants to run away with you. But every other part of me is glued here.
...more
“He sent it off to the press as the official palace statement!” Balduin screamed out, nearly going mad.
lol
“Do you love and trust me?” “Yes.” “Are you here to stay with me forever?” “Yes.”
