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

by Alix E. Harrow

Saint of War

You thought you would probably die soon. And then the Saint came.

But she said, in a voice like a dull blade dragged across a stone, “I am the Saint of War,” and you lost a great deal of faith in the bards’ songs. “Rise,” she said, “your kingdom needs you.”

So long as you do as I say.

you worked harder for him so that you might become the thing he needed so badly.

I am eating this shit up I love the language and imagery sm

“The Prince takes much from you, my lady.” “He made me, boy.” You had never asked your squire’s name, because it did not matter. You tilted your chin high. “He loves me.”

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

Parts of this remind me of Death’s voice in the book thief

she the girl, you the Devil, and I the Saint.

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

“The Prince takes much from you.” You lifted one shoulder. “He made me, my friend.” You had asked your squire’s name once, but he’d said he was never given one. You filled the absence with other words, none of which described what he was to you. “He—he loves me.”

Oh I love this. The messing with memory and fucking around with perspective

You could not decide if they were prophecies or memories, or whether there was any difference between the two.

You pulled the blow aside, but afterward you were sick and shaking with fear.

You grew used to it, so that you could never again sleep easily without it.

OW

OOF

They had to pull your squire away from you, weeping and mad, when they dragged your body to the courtyard.

“She has made an emperor of you, sire. When she takes Kemet, you will be a god.”

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.

Your squire made an abysmal fuss, unfastening your armor and searching your skin as if he expected to find a spear protruding from your leg.

He knows

“He made me, Gwynne.”

But over the years he had become so vital to you, so dear, that you gave him one. Gwynne, you called him, because it was beautiful and so was he. “He—he must love me.” Gwynne gave you a long, grieving look. “He never has,” he said, tiredly, and began refastening your armor.

OW. She’s slowly morphing into someone more and more human while growing more physically indestructible

You buried your face in your treacherous hands. “Gwynne,” you said. “Gwynne. I could have killed you.”

He kissed the center of each of your palms, precisely where the priest said the Savior suffered the nails to be driven.

He pulled you down beside him in the tall grass and touched you in that heady, secret way that transformed the brutal weapon of your body into mere flesh.

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.” “The Saint will be with me,” you said. But I wasn’t.

Giving Achilles and Paris

a woman following her own footprints, a snake eating her own tail, forever. 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. But only one person in all my lives has ever loved me, and he does not wear a crown.

I explain as if to a child,

As if to a child, Gabriel

I know his desires by the pace of his breath and the tilt of his shoulders, by the shape of his jaw and the heat of his gaze. I know him, and in knowing him I love him, and in loving him I cannot do as he wishes.

This is crazy. My chest hurts

Gagged

He is dead, and I belong to no one.

I return briefly to Gwynne, long enough to kiss his brow and whisper to him what I should have understood lifetimes ago, what I should have told him every night and every morning. “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.

This was so??? Wow