Mother of Death & Dawn (The War of Lost Hearts, #3)

by Carissa Broadbent

It’s not all that hard to keep yourself sane, so long as you’re flexible with your definition of the term.

Death was like a lost lover. We circled each other. I craved more with every brush of its touch. All I wanted was for it to take me to its bed and never let me leave.

“His heart is what truly lit the fires of war, and the fire burns because of you. The decision was for all of us, yes. But the vengeance? The vengeance is for you.”

“One hundred and eighty thousand days I have been at the mercy of human kings,” I snarled. “And if you think you are any better than any of them, you are a fool.”

“It was a gift, Max,” she murmured. “A gift to have known you. I hope that you have the most incredible, happy life. I hope you find a future worth forgetting your past. Make it worth it. Find joy. Do you understand?”

A realization came to me, one that I had been grappling with for the last ten years. There was no single moment when everything changed. No single before and after. There was just… life. A million decisions and a million consequences.

“You want the truth? The memories are hard, yes. But none of that scared me as much as the prospect of exactly how close I came to never seeing you again. That’s what fucking terrifies me.”

If you ever have to guess what I want, or what is best for me, it is you. Alright? I have made that decision already. I do not make it lightly. Don’t disrespect that by claiming that you know better for me than I do. I have made bad decisions before. But you are not, never have been, and never will be one of them. It is always you.”

We all feel the same things, and we will still die trying to kill each other for it.”

Grief was not a virus to be cured and expelled. It was a chronic condition that would shadow him forever.

“What are we even doing any of this for, if not for a future with the people we love?”

“Do not fear death, my daughter. We all walk with one foot in each world. There is beauty in impermanence. And what sad lives we would live, if we never loved anything we would lose.”

I love you did not say enough. I love you did not say, thank you for being my home. I love you did not say, thank you for being my future.

It ends with two souls who create a future together.

Is it enough? Never. But maybe it is something, to change a world one life at a time. It is something.