This Woven Kingdom (This Woven Kingdom, #1)

by Tahereh Mafi

I turn to right and left, in all the earth I see no signs of justice, sense or worth: A man does evil deeds, and all his days are filled with luck and universal praise; Another’s good in all he does – He dies a wretched, broken man whom all despise. But all this world is like a tale we hear – Men’s evil, and their glory, disappear.

she had learned long ago that when a home was not found, it was forged; indeed it could be fashioned even from nothing.

Kamran had once thought there could never in all the world exist his mother’s equal, not in beauty or elegance, not in grace or intelligence. He’d not known then how critical it was to also possess a heart.

better to simply push every day through the pain and the fear until she, too, was finally consumed by eternal darkness.

that perhaps only in death might she find the freedom she so desperately sought, for she had long ago given up hope of finding solace in this world.

Alizeh did not want to lose faith in this world; it was only that every pain she owned seemed to extract hope from her as payment.

He was the villain in this story, not she.

Violence alone, she knew, would accomplish nothing. Anger without direction was only hot air, there and gone.

it was an imagining that gave her comfort when her mind required an escape. She promised herself things wouldn’t always be this hard. She promised herself that the days would get better, bit by bit.

i love her

“I haven’t the slightest idea what we’re doing,” he said softly. “Though if you mean to take me captive, you need only ask. I would come willingly.”

“You have consumed my thoughts since the moment I met you,” he said to her. “I feel now, in your presence, entirely strange. I think I might fetch you the moon if only to spare your tears again.”

obsessed

“My name,” she said, “is Alizeh. I am Alizeh of Saam, the daughter of Siavosh and Kiana. Though you may know me better as the lost queen of Arya.”

“Do you wish to know my name, too, Your Majesty?” “Kamran,” she said softly. “I already know who you are.”

Somehow she knew – somehow she saw, with shocking clarity – that a planted kernel between them had bloomed. Quavering green shoots had sprung forth from the ground beneath her feet; shoots that, if nurtured, might one day flourish into something majestic, a towering tree that not only bore fruit and offered shade, but supplied a sturdy trunk against which she might rest her weary body.

He realized, with some despair, that everything would now remind him of her. The very sun and moon, the shifting of lightness and dark.

Kamran had been rearranged. He felt it; felt that his heart had moved, that his ribs had closed like a fist around his lungs. He was different, out of alignment, and he did not know whether this feeling would fade. Alizeh.

she’d been so much more than he’d known to hope for, and it had altered him: her mind as sharp as her heart; her smile as overwhelming as her tears.

For years she’d wondered whether anyone might ever again touch her with care or look at her like she mattered. She did not take lightly such an experience.

How good it was to be loved, she thought. How very important.

She had nothing and no one to claim but herself, and it would have to be enough. It would always have to be enough. Even in her most desperate moments, Alizeh had found the courage to move forward by searching the depths of herself; she’d found hope in the sharpness of her mind, in the capacity of her own capable hands, in the endurance of her unrelenting spirit. She would be broken by nothing. She refused.

In a single, swift movement Kamran grabbed Hazan by the collar and slammed his back against the wall. Hazan gasped. “You are hiding something,” Kamran said darkly. “What is your game?”

Was it worse, he wondered, to never know what you might have – or worse to have it snatched away before you might have it?

The mere sight of her had paralyzed him.

“Alizeh,” he said again, though he whispered it now, staring at her with a longing he did nothing to conceal.

She stopped breathing when he touched her,

“Say you came back for me,” he whispered. There was a thread of desire in his voice that threatened the good sense in her head, her very composure. “Tell me you came to find me. That you changed your mind.”

“I choose you,” he said simply. “I want you.”