A Power Unbound (The Last Binding, #3)

by Freya Marske

Lord Hawthorn laughed. The sound climbed Alan’s spine with thoughtful fingers.

so I’ve been scared my whole life and angry for even longer. It’s exhausting. You have no bloody idea how exhausting it is. Some people get exhausted out of the anger early, because they need all their energy simply to stay alive. As I said, I was lucky.” His smile was a thin line, a rope thrown disdainfully across a dark crevice, serving only to highlight just how wide and fundamental that distance between them was.

Alan indulged himself, leaning forward and taking a deep breath. No flowers. Nothing sweet or edible. The layered, complex scent drifted smugly down his airways and made a permanent footprint for itself on his nerves.

Jack's cologne

Jack had already been destroyed by a loss once. Instead of letting anyone else pick up the pieces, he’d taken them away on his own and let them heal at strange angles.

Now that he was talking, his doubts were firing themselves into the air like clay pigeons. He took aim one by one.