More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
November 28 - December 4, 2024
I’ll haunt your dreams. Your nightmares. I’ll haunt you even when you try to die.
My cheeks burn as I reach for my freshly bound braid and drape it over my shoulder. “I’m fine, Kolden. I asked for it.” His stare hardens. “Asking out of want and asking out of need are two entirely different things.”
What I want, what I need, and what is right are three entirely different things. The backs of my eyes burn, Rhordyn’s words landing a different blow than they did when I was bound in a red dress and my own cloistered naïvety. I told him I wasn’t as innocent as he thought. He told me I’d look back on the moment and realize I was wrong. It hurts how right he was.
I feel hopeless. Drained. I can’t afford to feel either of those things.
Out there, everything’s a weapon if you’re desperate enough.
Even gaunt and half starved, she’s unparalleled. Everything that’s good in this world, steeped in the sourness of loss.
Caring was watching her find a love that made her glow. It was hearing her speak about dreams of her own family—a family I knew she’d never have. Caring was hunting for ways to manipulate the fates while she lived in peaceful oblivion, not knowing that the happiest days of her life were about to come to an abrupt and heart-wrenching end. That she would be forced to watch her mate decompose from the inside out, helpless to fix him. Save him.
She drugged herself with sips of a half-death she believed would bring her closer to him.
She’s a flower, so fresh and full of life—crushed between my teeth as I swallow. She’s a sun in my throat, sinking low, igniting me from the inside out. She’s everything I love. Everything I hate.
Because I’m not his. Not anyone’s. Not anymore. I belong to the silver-licked shadows of my own mistakes.
The only definites in this world are the ones you forge for yourself.
Now with my circles connecting, the silt settling, I’m staring down the throat of a life without him, and there’s this emptiness below my ribs that makes me feel like it would be easier to just … fade away. It makes me more disposable than the boy.
Every wisp of emotion that was nesting in dark spots and hiding between my ribs congeals into a sawing vine that shreds me open, baring my messy insides to the man who’s always seen my bruised and battered heart.
“That’s what family does, Laith. We untangle our shit, no matter how messy the knot is.” Family. I didn’t know how much I needed to hear that word until now.
Family. I have something to fight for after all.
I’m not sure why he’s painting me such a pretty picture. In my experience, some of the prettiest pictures tell the deadliest secrets.
I see the way this story unfolds—how hopeless it is for me to try to rewrite the ending already scored in stone. To change the fate of this boy who’s going to die simply because I love him. Because I’m a black hole that gobbles up everything bright and good and alive. Because I exist.
“Think I’ll let the sharks do it.” “No,” I sob, crawling forward, reaching. “No!” “You. Did. This.” He lets go.
I literally hate him. Omg im so angry right now.
Lashing lengths of caustic blackness slither up from that chasm deep within my chest, honing their tapered tips, slitting my skin from the inside out. Hissing for me to kill. Kill. KILL! I can no longer hear the wind, the thunder, or the sound of my own heartbeat. I can no longer hear the raging ocean as it heaves and churns—riddled with beasts that won’t think before they chew. All I am is brain-bursting pressure and hissing vengeance. My fingers twist with the chain around my ankle, brutally aware that the jetty is made of wood. That cutting my ugly loose will kill me, too. I’ve lost
...more
All I can see is Zane holding up that golden token—begging for his life. All I can feel is Rhordyn’s warm kiss upon my forehead. I smile at Cainon as he whips back the sword. Laughing, I tip my head and bare my bound throat—hoping for a clean slice. Because I’m done. I’ve got nothing left to give. I don’t want to be here anymore.
Oh you poor girl
A boy I dove into shark-infested waters to recover because—fuck it—I like the kid. Orlaith likes the kid. We all like the kid. I have no hope for me, but for him … I’d punch a fucking ocean of sharks to make sure he doesn’t end up as mutilated inside and out as I am.
“You know, I still wonder why Jakar chose Rhordyn to be the bearer of his runes. Of the great gift of his divine power. I’m sure he regretted it when that savage immediately wiped out almost the entire race of Unseelie, then hunted what was left like dogs.” I laugh to myself, loud and twisted. He has no idea how wrong he is … No. Fucking. Idea. Jakar didn’t gift Rhordyn shit except barbed chains.
I bet he’s a feral knot right about now. Poor Laith. She might’ve survived Cainon, but Rhordyn’s a different story. You don’t simply survive that man after you nudge against his grain. You weather him like a storm. You batten down the hatches and pray he doesn’t rip off your roof and tear you to shreds. And when you step outside again, the world will not be as it was before because he’s not a storm that treads lightly. He reshapes the fucking terrain. And she didn’t just nudge him, she stabbed him through the heart. He’ll eat her for breakfast if she’s not careful. Cainon pushes to his
...more
“You … bared … your … throat …” His tone is hauntingly calm. Somehow, that’s much worse. “I …” I don’t understand what’s happening.
My soul lurches, my entire being clutching to a single wild thought … A thread of hope. He’s alive. He’s standing right behind me.
I don’t understand this reality. Don’t know how to handle it, or why it’s been gifted to me.
For the first time ever, I fucking hear. “I …” Regretted it the moment I did it. Almost followed you over that waterfall—more than once. “Yes, Milaje?” The words won’t come out. They’re lodged so deep in my throat I’m certain the only way to force them free will be to vomit them up. He’s here. He’s not dead.
Rhordyn stands over me like a storm wrestled straight from the sky, molded into a man. A monster. His eyes are black, ears sharp, features so cut and refined I’m convinced he was sculpted by the Gods themselves. That they hewed him from the deepest, darkest corners of the universe. Looking at him makes me want to fall to my knees and weep. He’s here. He’s really here.
I’m but a mouse dangling by my tail before his fathomless might. Waiting for him to pounce and gobble me down.
My wild emotions shift amidst my cramped insides, abrading my most tender parts. Battling for space. For air.
I want to speak. To tell him I didn’t want to live in a world without him. That I still don’t. I want to tell him that I don’t just love him. That a single four-letter word could never define the way I feel, nor could it explain the way my soul bled with his absence, driving me to do things that will always stick to my skin like a layer of filth. I want to tell him I was blind. Hurting. That my self-hatred bled off the page and tainted him because I was sick. Traumatized.
“You bare your throat like that again and the entire world will suffer.” My heart skips a beat as he leans back an inch, looking at me with a hardness that dwarfs every other look he’s ever given me. “I can’t be held accountable for what rips out of me if I’m forced to watch you die.”
But I can’t. Since I woke on that beach this morning, I’ve been walking through a dream—the past few days a big, messy, hurting blur I don’t want to think about. Or talk about. Ever.
“Orlaith.” My eyes snap up, delving into his fathomless black pools. I yearn to see the silver again. I don’t know why he’s hiding it from me.
For some reason, it makes the backs of my eyes sting. I blink, but continue to hold his gaze, something in those inky depths screaming for me to trust him. Problem is, I don’t trust myself. Not now. Not ever. “I’ll wait forever, Milaje.” The words are butter soft. Salt to my wound. When did he learn to handle sentences with such care? Why now? I’ll wait forever … The messed-up thing is, I believe him. And I can’t stand this tension for another minute, let alone forever.
Perhaps he wants me to tell him about how I almost choked to death on liquid bane? That all I could think about was that I was going to die a failure? That the little girl in the cell was going to die with unquenched hope in her heart, perhaps believing the filthy, vile words I wove for Cainon to earn me a second chance to set her free? Perhaps he wants me to tell him I walked into Calah’s feeding arena wearing tears of relief because I didn’t want to continue living in a world where he didn’t exist? Or maybe he wants me to talk about how I ripped off my necklace on that pier and tried to kill
...more
Does he want me to tell him that I looked at death and laughed because, in that moment, I truly believed Cainon was about to slay a monster just as worthy of death as himself? Avoid.
I no longer enjoy weaving my fingers through the heavy lengths, or draw safety and satisfaction from it hanging around me like a shield. Instead, it reminds me of ugly things that made my skin crawl. Made me feel powerless and trapped. Like my voice had been snipped. Like my body was no longer mine. I hate it. I want it gone.
She has no idea of the power she wields. I’d crumble worlds just to see her smile.
He’s watching me through the reflection. Watching me watch him. Undress.
It’s just me, alone with my demons and a ghost that haunts my broken heart.
don’t want to hurt her. I want to fucking mend her.
“You deserve better than that …” Than me. Because I’m broken. In pieces. A tangled black vine that’ll smother him to death.
“I bow to no one, but I’ll get down on my knees before the Gods and beg you to choose this. To live.”
The world would be so much better if you just disappeared …
I want him to take me. Devour me. I want him to eat my soul and spit it out in a heap that can never be pieced together by anyone but him.
Love him today, hate him tomorrow. I’m not going anywhere.
“You’re fragile. I don’t want to hurt you.” “I decide what I can and cannot handle.”
She’s everything light, bright, and beautiful to my hard, coarse darkness, her ivory skin such a stark contrast to the tone of mine.
He told me there were things I still didn’t know, but this … I wasn’t expecting this.
