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

by Alix E. Harrow

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.

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

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

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.

I tell her what she has wanted to hear all her life: that someone, somewhere, needs her. That she is not nothing.