Queen and Conqueror (The Queen's Red Guard, #1)

by Isabelle Olmo

“Men will never be ready for women like us, and it is not our job to ready them.”

“A ruler that doesn’t have people to question them quickly becomes a tyrant. That is not your path,” Sanaa said.

“Death is not a pretty thing,” Almira said. M nodded. “No, it’s not, but neither is life.”

He wanted to say he recalled all her words. Even the ones she threw on the ground like discarded petals. How he’d collected them and stuffed them in his pockets like a lunatic. How he replayed them as he fruitlessly sought sleep. How they haunted him as he drank heavily to tune out the noise of the world.

“Perhaps we shouldn’t attribute certain characteristics to men and women. We should allow each person to decide how they’d like to speak. Then we wouldn’t analyze what is proper.”

“There’s days I must hold myself in a tight fist to not fall to my knees and beg you to care for me in the manner that I have desperately and uncontrollably grown to care for you. Everything I do is to get a reaction from you, to watch you smile or anger, I want to see the spectrum of your emotions, even the bad ones. I want to bask in them.”