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

by Alix E. Harrow

He wore an expression you had never seen before, an avid, scorching hunger, which you thought must be love.

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

oh. im sick.

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 saw yourself as an unholy triptych, three into one, one into three: she the girl, you the Devil, and I the Saint.

I see my squire, too, hovering at the edges of every vision. 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.

I wonder, for the first time, what it would be like to grow old.

But he is my King, and I am his Devil. I have given him my blood, my youth, my love, my good right hand; who am I now to begrudge him my death?

This time, when he drowns me, I think of all the stories they will still sing of me—the hero of the empire, the scourge of the Gray City, the knight with the hellfire hair—and then I think: 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 a knife.” And you said, wretchedly, “But I am his.”

Then he whispered, so gently you barely heard it—but I did, oh, I did—“You are not his.”

“I would rather love a coward than mourn a legend.”

SICK

You saw yourself as a sickly child, and you understood once again who you were, and would be, and are now: a woman following her own footprints, a snake eating her own tail, forever.

ouroboros analogies get me everytime

The Saint of War. I.

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.

oh my god

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

speechless

He says my name, my old name, the one I had before I was a devil or a saint. Then he says, “You are not his.”