The Obelisk Gate (The Broken Earth, #2)

by N.K. Jemisin

But it is one thing to resolve to die, quite another to actually carry out that resolve in the midst of dying.

He is what he is. But she needs to know why he is the way he is… and more importantly, she wants to know how to make him better.

His fingertips are on the back of her neck, and it would be so easy for him to push in, destroy her sessapinae, kill her with a single thrust. He hasn’t. He’s been fighting the urge, all this while. He would rather suffer this, risk this, than let her help him, and that is the worst thing in all the world.

She swallows. If she hurts him because she loves him, is that still hurt? If she hurts him a lot now so that he will hurt less later, does that make her a terrible person?

His gaze is soft and terrible. Icewhite eyes can’t be anything but, though there’s love layered over the terrible.