Foxglove (Belladonna, #2)

by Adalyn Grace

The first was perhaps the ugliest that Fate had ever woven, for too much of it was gray, and purpled like a bruise. And yet it was one that Fate had taken his time with, every thread sewed with precision as he crafted this cruel gift for his brother: a woman Death would love but could never have.

There is power to being a pretty girl in a pretty dress,

Fate was a fool if he thought that she would ever leave Death. She loved him like the winter, resolute and all-consuming. Loved him with summer’s steadiness, and with the ferocity of nature itself.

“Whatever you are and whatever you can do, you are not who Fate expects you to be. You are still Signa Farrow, and I am not a good enough man to allow my brother to take you from me.”

tea and make merry as the heat glared down on them. She didn’t care to be a sunflower, unfurling her petals in the daylight for all to see. She would rather be an adorable little mushroom, thriving in the dark crevices where few ventured to look.

“If playing dirty is what it takes to get you to remember all that you have lost, then I will be the filthiest bastard you’ve ever met, Signa Farrow.

If people are afraid, he said, then let them be afraid. Your shoulders were not meant to bear the weight of their expectations, Signa. You were not made to please others.

He grimaced as the kit squirmed in his grip. “Be still and stop your fussing, you beastly thing.” Despite the harshness of his words, Aris’s voice was admiringly soft.

Too often the world did not consider women as people but as stepping stones for men. A woman was ostracized the moment she strayed from the prescribed path, left to fend for herself in a world with too few opportunities. Signa wished there was a safer option than these herbs, but she couldn’t fault Eliza for her choice.

“You are mine.” The words were not possession, but a promise. “For as long as you’ll have me, you are mine, Signa Farrow. I will burn this world to cinders before I let anyone take you from me.”

“My love for you is not confined to time, nor fate,” she continued. “It is a love that I will hold with me for an eternity, which is why I am not afraid. I swear to you that I will always be yours, even when I am not.”