More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
If little is known about Parisa Kamali, even less is known about Reina Mori. Not that it’s a competition, but if it were, Reina would win.
There was something growing in her now, festering. Something softer than betrayal, but only in a rotting way, like a translucent peach fuzz of mold. Maybe she was annoyed with him.
She never thought of anyone sexually. That she possessed any sexual organs at all was of as little interest to her as it would have been to any other nongerminating plant.
“Well, I’m sure it was all exactly as playful as you imagine and not at all some kind of ongoing experiment to indoctrinate you into their cult of homicidal academia.”
Nobody knew better than Callum how terrible it was to spend time with Callum—except possibly for Tristan, who had been willing to kill him.
He enjoyed Sundays. He did not feel dread about Mondays. He did not feel dread, dread was for people who wanted to suffer twice, suffer three times.
“You … saw Gideon?” he asked, bewildered. Or furious. Or deeply lethargic. Or in some kind of horrifying, indigestion-related pain.
“Do you miss her?” Parisa asked quietly. They didn’t have to say her name aloud. “Sometimes.” He missed Libby Rhodes the way he would miss having electricity. Or his left hand. He did not know how to function without her. “And you miss him,” Parisa observed. Again, no names. Which meant Parisa probably already knew that Nico missed Gideon like he would miss his conscience, or his ability to slip a punch. He did not know who he was when Gideon was gone.
Reina realized eventually that there was a strange, growing tension between the occupants of the house as the days of their so-called fellowship became more perilously numbered.
Of course she loved. How else would she be riddled with holes like this if she were really so impermeable, so incapable of wounding? Just because to her, sex and love and desire and affection were different things—some of which she needed or wanted, and some she firmly did not?
But even this, a cautious kiss from Belen’s careful mouth, was riotous with sensation. The hint of pressure was like a spark to Libby’s imagination, igniting something dormant in her chest as a purr of satisfaction slipped from her parted lips into Belen’s smiling mouth.
Parisa was silent for a moment before she touched Tristan’s temple gently. Almost tenderly. “Libby Rhodes is not your goodness, Tristan,” she cautioned. Steadying him, as if for disappointment. “She’s her own open flame.”
“You think that’s good news?” Belen asked in a voice that suggested Libby was actually an incurable moron. “Thirty years from now, you think it’s good that someone has ignored everything that we already know about the world right now? And there’s an entire society that knows how to fix it but doesn’t?”
Libby shook her head, adamant. Callum was the manipulative one. Parisa was, and Ezra, and Atlas. She had only done what was necessary, and it had pained her the whole time.
In Libby’s mind, something horrifying turned, not unlike a key in a latch. Something, for Libby Rhodes, unlocked. Perhaps it was cruelty.
She had once fallen in love with a professor who was not a professor, who represented power and femininity and the promise of taking the things she deserved, who turned out to be just another white girl who thought that whatever obscure thing she was born to accomplish was worth more than Belen’s entire future.
Gideon felt Nico’s breath catch on his tongue, an audible hitch of surprise, and then Nico pulled away and Gideon thought no, no, no— “Oh. So it’s like that?” Nico said. His eyes were searching and bewilderingly, confusingly bright. In response Gideon felt unopened and raw, like he’d cracked his chest in two and presented the evidence for Nico’s evaluation. “Yeah.” It left Gideon in a rasp, but fuck it. It had lived in his throat long enough. “Yeah,” he attempted again, “yeah, it’s like that.” Nico’s smile broadened. “Good.” Nico caught him by a fistful of his T-shirt, tugging him in again.
...more