The Six Deaths of the Saint (Into Shadow, #3)

by Alix E. Harrow

Your joints grated, and your vision spun in sickening lurches, but you rose, because she was a saint and you were nothing, because no one had ever needed you before.

And you found you did not mind being a devil, so long as you were his.

When you die, little Devil, a kingdom will fall to its knees and crawl to your bier. In a thousand years and a thousand after that, they will still sing of the Prince and his Devil. So long as you do as I say.

You grew strong over those years, and fast, until your body was no longer something you wore but something you wielded, and Lord, what a weapon it became.

“I could have killed you,” you said, and he had answered, obscurely, “You never do.”

You couldn’t name the emotion you felt, in that last second before you fell into your squire’s arms, but I can: relief.

And you understood, finally, that there had never truly been a she or a you but only a terrible, lonely I.

First he is a limping, gawking collection of limbs, then a slim boy, then a graceful man with sad eyes, always on you. I notice for the first time that he is beautiful.

But in the end, there was no saint, just a lonely girl telling secrets to herself in a dark mirror.

His eyes landed on every pink scar, every old injury that still ached. “Is this love?” he asked softly.

“I could have killed you,” you said. “You never would,” he said. He took the hilt from your sweaty grip and pulled you back down to the blankets beside him. You slept that night with his hand circling your right wrist, holding you fast. You grew used to it, so that you could never again sleep easily without it.

It is not worth it.

“He—he must love me.” Gwynne gave you a long, grieving look. “He never has,” he said, tiredly, and began refastening your armor.

You are not his.”

Gwynne’s voice cut through yours, his brow still resting heavily on your forehead. “I would rather love a coward than mourn a legend.”

That I have lived and killed and lived again in the name of a man who does not deserve it because I wanted so badly to be beloved. But only one person in all my lives has ever loved me, and he does not wear a crown.

I know him, and in knowing him I love him, and in loving him I cannot do as he wishes.

He is dead, and I belong to no one.

“One person will.”

“I am yours.”

This time, when I push my face into the pool, when the water fills my mouth and floods my lungs, I am smiling. They will never sing my name.