The Serpent and the Wings of Night (Crowns of Nyaxia, #1)

by Carissa Broadbent

Death isn’t frightening when weighed against an insignificant existence.”

I could never be anything this way, fighting so hard to survive that I could never do anything.

Strange, that girls are so often told that the loss of their virginity marks a threshold between girlhood and womanhood, as if it fundamentally alters them in some way. It was not the sex that changed the girl forever. Not the blood that spilled between her thighs that shaped her.

The blood that spilled over that marble floor, though… Those are the stains on one’s innocence that never fade.

I wanted to put my hand over that wound in his heart, even when my own threatened to tear me apart.

“I would beg,” he murmured. “For you, I would. You have fucking destroyed me, Oraya. Do you know that?”

I would beg for him, too. Break for him. Cut myself open like an animal for dissection. He held me open that way, not just my body but my soul, too.

And the difference between nothing mattering and one thing mattering is a big one.”

Love was a sacrifice at the altar of power.

I was ready to let my kingdom fall for you.

Anger made things easy. Love made things complicated.