Our Dark Duet (Monsters of Verity, #2)

by Victoria Schwab

Where are you?

A boy burning from the inside out.

She saw a girl who wasn’t afraid of the dark.

See no evil → hear no evil → tell yourself there’s no evil

Violence has a taste a smell but most of all it has a heat— the shadow stands in the street engulfed in smoke in fire in wrath in rage basking in the warmth and for an instant light glances

off a face finding— cheekbones a chin the barest hint of lips for an instant— but it is not enough it is never enough one human holds so little heat and it is cold again— hungry again— its edges blurring back into darkness the way edges always do it wants more searches the night and finds—

a woman, a pistol, a bed a couple, a kitchen, a cutting block a man, a pink slip, an office the whole city a book of matches just waiting to be struck.

compassion must be louder than pride.”

All things fall, mused Leo.

the poetry of made replacing maker, shadow outlasting source.

that predators were made to conquer prey.

All Malchai rose from murder, it was true, but he had risen from a massacre.