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Two things stood between me and a good night’s sleep, and I was allowed to kill only one of them.
Panic was a plague. Its sole purpose was to spread until it tore through every thought, every instinct.
“Children are not meant to bear the woes of this life, Sylvia. It breaks them. They will spend their adult lives doing everything in their power to never feel the weight of the world again.”
As reliable as the rising and setting of the sun, the hubris of men was a winning bet.
Because it is the nature of humanity to celebrate the things that want to kill them.
“There is no such thing as a worthy sacrifice. There are only those who die, and those willing to let them.”
She had the temperament of a deranged goose. Every interaction he’d shared with her had thoroughly convinced him he was not dealing with a stable woman.
Shame is a dangerous feeling to manipulate. Pull at the string too many times, and it will eventually snap into apathy.
“You think your mind is a blank slate, where you can build your own networks of information from scratch, through pure logic and reason. You ignore that each child enters a completely unique world, founded on different truths. We build our reality on the foundation our world sets for us. You entered a world where magic is corrosive and Jasadis are inherently evil. I entered one where turning a shoe into a dove made my mother laugh. Have you considered, in that infinite mind of yours, that the truly brilliant people are the ones who understand the realities we build were already built for us?”
“You talk too much for someone who’s meant to be seen and not heard.”
I wanted to cut him open and compare our bones to understand why his gave him grace and mine gave me back pain.
“The way most men love is so boring. It is frequent and fickle and altogether unextraordinary. Arin would love to obsession. To madness. But do you want to know the real reason he would never allow himself to love another?” Vaida stepped close, her floral scent tickling my nose. “Arin is consumed by what he loves. If asked, he would get on his knees and let it kill him. He withholds his heart out of self-preservation.”
“It’s customary for the hostess to outshine her guests.” Arin’s eyes swirled with humor and something quieter, more intimate. Just for me. “You’ve made that impossible.”
“Love?”
“I know now what love should feel like, and it is not this.”
“You little liar,” he whispered. Choked and low. “You maddening Jasadi girl, I cherish your tongue too much to see it cut out of your head. Never speak those words to me or anyone else again. Do you understand?” He pulled me away and shook my arms. My teeth clacked together. Urgency hardened in his voice. “Tell me you understand!”
“I am not immortal, lofty, mighty, or magnificent. I cannot be, because I am just a man.” Every word was bitten off, drawn from a place that simmered in neglect for too long. Ice-blue eyes, eyes that saw too much, saw through my careful pretenses, searched my own. “I am only a man.”
I had made a vow against intoxication, but I would recant immediately for the chance to savor the decadence of him.
