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

by Alix E. Harrow

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.

You remained conscious up until the moment you looked down and saw your own hand lying on the steps and understood that you would never again hold a sword. You couldn’t name the emotion you felt, in that last second before you fell into your squire’s arms, but I can: relief.

You saw yourself as an unholy triptych, three into one, one into three: 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.

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

“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.