More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
And he’d regarded her with pity. How stupid of him.
Her body is… sharp, she thinks. Shoulders that cut right angles, prominent cheek bones. She is somehow… disappointed. She looks as she feels. Unforgiving, inflexible.
She wonders if one day, she can will herself to change. She wonders if she has it within her to be more than just bitterness.
A tendril of wariness caresses Dawsyn’s neck. At first, she thinks it is the ominous quality of a place such as this, so quiet and empty. It automatically brings about a sense of threat. There are stocks, chains, a tree trunk long since cut and stripped and erected here, Mother knows what for. The awareness licks at her again, raising the hairs along her arms, and it is only then that she sees him. In the dark, Ryon sits at the base of the wooden post.
His gaze clouds with something like dread. Dread for her, she realises. He dreads her reaction to whatever it is he must say.
Eventually, he looks back to her and says, “Did you know you are the only one I’ve ever… cared for?” he confesses, stumbling over the words. “Truly cared for, I mean. Worried for. Longed for. I thought of you… endlessly.” Dawsyn knows a little of this same madness. It hurts to hear it voiced.
I have a gun. Finger on the trigger.
“I failed you,” he tells her, though Dawsyn gets the impression that he doesn’t say it for her. He says it for himself, to vent his thoughts, release some sort of inner haunting. “I found you,” he murmurs. “Finally, I found you. Someone just like me. And then I failed you.” He lifts a hand to his face and scrubs it, eyes pained, tortured. He looks like a man crumbling under the pressure of the world. “Tonight, I failed you again.”
She says nothing in return. Dawsyn isn’t entirely sure she wants his hands on her, but she wants hers on him. She wants someone to bring him solace. She is made of opposing forces pulling her in opposite directions.
Her glare turns to Dawsyn. And Dawsyn sees… death. Her blood turns cold.
“And he will give it,” Baltisse says bitingly. “He will do anything you ask him to do, Dawsyn, without question, without hesitation. As I said, love forfeits sense.”
And I can read it clearly in his mind. He is desperate to atone. So, I will grant you the favour of fair warning, Sabar. If you use him, if you take advantage of his remorse for the sake of a quest you know will fail, you will make me into an enemy.”
There is a difference between the smell of wood burnt in the hearth, and that of a home set alight. The latter is noxious, a deadly blend of all that once comprised someone’s existence, now melted, charred.
She is vacant. While he… he is fracturing.
Ryon looks to Dawsyn, who is staring at her palms as though their lines have been redrawn.
She walks through the forest, unable to sit still in her body. She has a desire to flee the parts of her she does not recognise, but it is no use. She walks and walks, but everywhere she goes, there she is.
His fathomless stare implores her. “Tell me,” he bids, a whisper. It feels the same as his breath on her throat, his fingers on her back.
Ryon hesitates before speaking, a crease appearing between his brows. “I don’t recognise you, malishka.” “Don’t call me that.” “It isn’t like you to feel sorry for yourself.”
I LOVE HIM I LOVE HIM I LOVE HIM
She sighs, twisting her face out of his hands. “I know what you are doing.” “And what’s that?” “Goading me into fighting with you.” He grins just slightly, but it disappears when he sees that she won’t be goaded. She won’t be poked and pulled out of herself.
I AM CHOMPING AT THE METAL BARS OF MY ENCLOSURE MY GOD
If she asks it, he will die to achieve it, she knows.
So, she tells Ryon nothing. Instead, she presses her lips against his, starved for his comfort. Desperate for diversion. Ryon’s hand grasps her chin, and he holds her there. It’s like breath, this kiss. It fills her.
THE AUDIBLE SCREACH I JUST RELEASED
She wants to be small and disappear within him, let him obliterate her.
but not enough that she doesn’t hear the words that skate over her face. “I love you.” She stills. Her eyes open. It is not passion that comes to engulf her, or tenderness. It is, of all things, terror.
She shakes her head. “No.” It is cold. Final. Ryon sighs, leaning away from her and dropping his hands. “My apologies. I know… I know you do not wish to hear it.” Dawsyn presses her palms into her eyes, wanting to wipe the words from her memory. “You do not love me.” Ryon stills. She can practically hear his mind whirring. “You deny me my feelings?” “I deny your assignment of them,” she says, shaking her head. “It is not love that you feel.” Ryon’s tone turns acidic. “What other name should I give this torment?”
WHAT OTHER NAME WOULD YOU GIVE THIS TORMENT
He watches her until she needs to look away, and she hates that she must cede this small war as well.
He is staring at her, unblinking. “You think yourself wicked?” he asks. “My last thought was how grateful I was that they killed me first, so that I would not be made to watch you die.”
This is my husband. This is my baby's father!
“I’ve been plagued by the thought that you may never forgive me, that you may never see the truth. All of my loyalty, every last bit, lies with you,” he professes. “The thought that I might be doomed to a life trailing in your wake has… disturbed me. Now I need not be plagued. It’s fear that distances you,” he states, and it is gentle, kind. “Not anger.”
ALL MY LOYALTY...EVERY LAST BIT LIES WITH YOUUUUUU
“Nary a moment I’ve seen him as wounded as yeh make him now, Dawsyn. I know yer tough. Yer tougher than anyone ought to be,” he says. “An’ it ain’t yer fault. It’s what that mountain needed yeh to be. But yeh needn’t be so tough on someone who accepts you anyway, ax an’ all,”
Ryon is possessed of that rare quality that looks by it all. He’d take yeh, no matter yer faults, because he sees yeh clearly. And I think,” – Salem sighs – “he deserves someone who’d do the same fer him.”
She is not like Ryon, who gives pieces of himself away to those in need of him.
Before she dies, she can nod toward the reinstated good and say ‘See? I saved more than I took. Are we not even? Am I not made of many shades?’
He rolls his eyes at her, as though he finds her exasperating. “I’m not trying to insult you. Unclench your fists.” “I’m deciding whether I should put one in your face.”
“We are lots of things. Lovers is no longer one of them.” Hector grins. “And you loathe complexity.” How nice it is to be so easily understood. “I do.” “Yet, you’re one of the most complex people I know.” Dawsyn’s head whips around. “How so?” “You’re impenetrably stern, yet you care more than most.”
She is so nesta coded and she is so me coded. I find myself painfully relating to dawsyn.
“You’re fierce and confident… but scared.” She bristles. “I’m–” “You crave safety, and yet you see any offer of protection as a threat.”
“But I think you fear anyone knowing you well. I think you fear becoming predictable to another. You see safety in distance.”
My god that hurt to read
It’s a difficult thing to know someone loves you before they know it themselves. He must reconcile with it all the same. It would be worse to have her realise she loves him and disregard it anyway. Every day he worries that it has already happened, that she has deemed their differences too vast, insurmountable. If that’s the case, then he is doomed to spend the rest of his life thinking she’s wrong, and there will be no way of showing her.
The way he pinessssss for her
“I wish you’d let me help you,” he says, unwilling to let go of her wrist. “I know,” she says, surprising him. She looks up and smiles weakly. “I’m working on it.” Ryon’s heart stutters, a flood of warmth spreads within his chest.
“And who’s to say you have a right to know what I do?” “If it concerns Dawsyn, then I should know.” “Because you love her?” “Love is a trace of what I feel,” he snarls.
He is OFFICIALLY on my book husbands roster
He speaks lowly. “I know you will tell me you are not afraid–” “I am afraid,” she says immediately.
Ryon looks up from the ground, contemplating her. “As am I.”
She meets his dark eyes and tries to take some of the panic from them. “You can try not to vex me,” she says, a grin appearing. “Lest I become too excitable. You heard Baltisse.”
Ryon takes her hand in both of his, cradling it as though it were a life source. He brings it to his lips, lets his breath warm her fingers. “There is not enough distance in this valley to keep that from happening,” he grumbles.
I would fall over and weep for this man
Dawsyn looks up at him and tries to narrow her eyes. She has no idea whether it is effective. “I accept your challenge.” Ryon shakes his head. “I offered no challenge.” “I accept the inference of your challenge.” “I inferred no cha–” “We will duel!” Dawsyn calls out, arms raised. “The winner will be forever deemed more dignified than the other.”
“Mother save me.” “Take your stance.” “I decline.” Dawsyn squares her feet. “Ready?” “No.” “Mind your mark.” “Dawsyn,” Ryon warns, exasperated. “Fight!” With that, she lunges forward,
His hands tense against her back. “Because of what I am?” “Because of what you could do to me.” Dawsyn squeezes her eyes shut.
“You wouldn’t be attempting to lead me straight into the dragon’s lair, would you?” Ruby straightens, her water sloshing heavily. “Of course I am,” is her reply. “How else are we to slay it?”
Ryon turns quickly to see Dawsyn, standing over Gerrot’s still form. And she is a vision of cold, endless wrath.
The noise of hatred always dilutes injustice, makes it too easy to disregard,
If you were practical, you’d part with names and whereabouts swiftly.” “If I were practical, I would have made myself deaf and dumb a long time ago,” Ruby mutters.
