A Power Unbound (The Last Binding, #3)

by Freya Marske

The Blyth siblings had the stubbornness of two people who had each adopted a stray cat with a terrible personality and were determined to have them cohabit.

“If you bought me a suit of clothes, I will throw them out the window,” he said flatly. “I wouldn’t dare. They’re castoffs. Fit only for the rag bin. Or you.” Oliver made a noise of outraged pride, but all of Jack’s eyes were for the way Alan’s face came alive with challenge.

Jack Alston might not have magic, but he was moving through the world again, and had people relying on him again, and it was blood rushing back into the numb flesh of his feelings. Forcing him to live.

The past could turn you into a strip of paper with a single side, so that comfort and vulnerability slid away down invisible channels and couldn’t be grasped. Except, perhaps, if you bent your will towards unlearning your own history. If you let yourself soften and be porous. Even if only like this, in silence, and at an angle.

It was a new experience, to want his solitude and then find someone intruding on it and be glad. A small gladness, like a mouthful of good wine, but world-shaking in its novelty. Not since Elsie died had there been someone whose company Jack preferred to his own.

“I would take your heart between my ribs and guard it like my own. Is there any way I could make you believe it?”

I would write you into immortality. I would trap you in ink and wear the pages next to my skin until they fell apart. Kiss me until I know you. Kiss me until you know me, and unmake me, and love me anyway.