Fourth Wing (The Empyrean, #1)

by Rebecca Yarros

She can’t die, and not just because there’s a chance I won’t survive. She can’t die because I know I can’t live without her even if I do. Somewhere between the shock of our attraction at the top of that turret to realizing she risked her own life by giving up a boot for someone else on the parapet that first day to her throwing those daggers at my head under the oak tree, I wavered. I should have realized the danger of getting too close the first time I put her on her back and showed her how easily she could kill me on the mat—a vulnerability I’ve allowed no one else—but I brushed it off as an undeniable attraction to a uniquely beautiful woman. When I watched her conquer the Gauntlet, then defend Andarna at Threshing, I stumbled, stunned by both her cunning and her sense of honor. When I burst into her room and found Oren’s treacherous hand at her throat, the rage that made it so easy to kill all six of them without batting an eye should have told me I was headed for a cliff. And when she smiled at me after mastering her shield in mere minutes, her face lighting up as the snow fell around us, I fucking fell. We hadn’t even kissed, and I fell.

Ughhh heart shattered 🥹