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

by Carissa Broadbent

But one had to learn how to hear what lingered in between the words.

You had to bend, with people like Vincent. Reach for what they wouldn’t give you themselves.

Maybe I had hoped I would find some missing piece of myself, when I had never felt more painfully incomplete.

And though my wounds had closed, the one deep in my chest bled more than ever.

All the parts of myself that I’d been so careful to hide from him were too close to the surface.

Emotions were ever-shifting and devoid of logic,

The line between anger and sadness is so thin. I had learned that fear can become rage, but rage can so easily shatter into devastation. The fractures spiderwebbed across my heart.

He saw too much of me. Understood every complexity and senseless duality. I was honest even when I didn’t mean to be. He did not fear my darkness, nor pity my compassion.