More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Sy might have broken into the mansion and gotten her back, but I was the first one to save her. I was the one who spent months setting up all the dominoes. I gave her everything I could. I gave her my brother. I gave her my best friend.
“You gave her a phone?” The line of Lavinia’s back goes rigid and she clutches it closer, as if I’m going to take it away. “What if she—” “Has a way to call when shit goes sideways?” Sy snaps, shooting me a glare. “The Duchess is a target. She needs a way to keep in contact.”
“Your Duchess might have been a prisoner, but ours isn’t.”
“Not much of a bird if she can’t fly a little.”
They know what I did. They’re offering to protect the Duchess from her own motherfucking Duke.
I only let my touch linger for a second, thinking that being shot wouldn’t be so terrible if she were the one pulling the trigger. Hatred is better than nothing.
“Not every King has a castle, Little Bird.”
Nick’s right. He is my Duke and technically, I’m supposed to obey him. But he’s also supposed to protect me, and he didn’t. And now he has to learn what it’s like to be someone’s bitch. Mine.
It all makes sense then. Sy would kill to win. He’d kill to survive. And he’d kill to protect the people he cares about.
I can only see the Remy who stood on that Belfry, weeks ago, so fucking beautiful and broken. I can only see myself.
It’s just weird to think about, since Tate wasn’t just hers. She belonged to the boys, too. Men that are now mine.
“And even if it wasn't, here’s the thing about boxes and cages, Nick. They aren’t always literal.”
“Hate is big, baby. Bigger than love. People move mountains for hate. They kill for it.
wasn’t lying that day when I explained to Remy that I need things when I’m near her. Her attention. Her touch. Any of her. All of her. I let the smirk free. “Right now, I’m the most important person in your life.”
staring at my knuckles, and the letters tattooed across them. D-U-K-E. A fist of Forsyth, protector of West End. A fucking joke.
You had a million chances to really save me, and you didn’t, because all you care about is yourself!”
But Lavinia’s always had this anger problem. It’s part of why I knew she’d work as Duchess, and it’s part of why she’s going to fail at it. Because every Duke eventually comes to learn that it can lead to a win or a loss, and anger doesn’t really care which.
“You’ll have to kill me.” Her face hardens as she says the words, as if she’s just realizing the truth of them. She’d rather be dead than let me free.
“Know what I think is funny?” I ask, offering a cutting smile. “The fact that men fail at fatherhood on such a statistically massive scale that there’s an actual term for it, but somehow it’s used to insult women.”
I think of how he owns me here and now, but when the clock strikes midnight, I’m the one holding the leash. It isn’t anger that drives my next punch. It’s certainty.
But a certainty that winning doesn’t matter. At the end of the day, a body can be a weakness just as much as a strength—even his.
“Just hold on to me,” he says, pulling away. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
Because Remy touches me like I’m precious. Important. Special. And it makes me fucking burn for him.
You’re Royalty. You’re the Duchess.” He tugs me close, leaning down to whisper, “My guiding star.”
“Don’t let me out until you stop hating me.” Enjoy eternity, I guess.
and suddenly, I find myself unwilling to be told what to eat or drink. Not by another entitled man.
I need to fucking know, and I’d drag her kicking and screaming through this mud to make sure I do. But I wouldn’t feel good about it. She’s my Duchess.
maybe Sy wants to harden her into the same stone Tate was made of, but I don’t. I prefer her just like she is, standing before me so small and yet so big, the tip of her nose glowing a vivid pink.
“Do you trust me?” I yell over the storm. But since I’m pretty sure I don’t want to hear the answer to that question, I amend, “Do you want to trust me? Because I want to trust you!”
“I can order you!” I remind her, beating my chest in emphasis. “I’m your Duke, and that means you’re mine! The Duchess serves at my pleasure.” I can already see her shutting down, becoming all that hardness Sy’s been trying to mold her into. Shaking my head, I add, “But I won’t order you to do this. This isn’t a cage, Vinny. No box. No prison. There are things I’ll make you do because I’m your Duke, and this isn’t one of them. This has to be free or it’s nothing at all.”
“Because I wanted you to know how beautiful it was.” Her eyes swim with dread. “Death isn’t beautiful. Death is nothing.”
I know when she surges up to kiss me that she’s figured out it’s a plea. That I’m begging for something bigger than myself.
Feeling her beside me as we jump. Knowing that she’s with me as we fall.
Vinny is here. She’s real. She’s mine.
“This will make you mine. Not just your body. Not just because you're my Duchess. You understand, don’t you?”
Sy can take her body. Nick can claim her mind. I want her soul.
He wants a piece of me that doesn’t exist. He wants intensity, substance, emotion, solidity, but inside, I just feel empty. And I use him to fill the void.
Did you see them, baby? Did you see where we are?” I cup his cheeks and pull his mouth to mine, wet from the rain, dirty from the ground, and I promise him, “I saw them.”
Even so, what I said was true. I didn’t just see the stars. I felt them.
And since you’re so hot for the truth tonight, I suppose I’ll give you some more. I’m not sorry. Not for wanting you, taking you, saving you.”
“Every soldier needs something to keep him going.” “You’re not a soldier anymore,” I point out. He looks around, gesturing to the door, the keys. “And you’re not in a cage.”
“I’m not sure I can go back to the person I was before I met you.”
“I said not to let me out until you stopped hating me.” “You were right,” I say, standing back. “You are the most important person in my life. But not because I hate you. You’re the only person who can help me find out the truth about my sister. You’re the closest hope I have to putting this to rest and moving on with whatever sad joke of a life awaits me on the other side.”
Putting someone in a cage isn’t a great moment. Freeing them isn’t much better.
don’t think he realizes how impossible it is to live with a book I can’t read.
So here we are again, tied up in secrets and lies. Reliant on one another. Not my favorite position.
Something tells me these men are stuck, just like the face of this clock, announcing the Dukes’ chaos to all of Forsyth. I may be the only one that can fix it.
Time can be broken if your world is small enough.
I suppose everyone in Forsyth pays a price for something.
I’m a Lucia—the Duchess of West End—and a little spilled blood isn’t enough to scare me away.
