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He is the opposite of a brute, and a thousand times more dangerous for it, because you cannot know from which direction he will strike.”
“You are a creature of pure spite. You would not react out of fear, but out of fury. I think daily of chaining you to a wall and seeing which you would attack first—me, or the wall.”
“What if you were wrong? What if you had miscalculated?” “Pointless questions are best left to the poets,” Arin said.
“I won’t say you were right, only that you weren’t as wrong as usual.”
Even if he were capable of caring for someone else, I cannot imagine he would ever be so selfish as to let himself fall in love. He knows his own nature and all the dark places love could steer him.”
“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.”
Being with him would be honeyed annihilation, too much for a flesh-and-bone body to bear.
He was the most achingly beautiful threat I’d ever seen.
He straightened, gaze roaming over my gown. “Sefa did wonderful work on your dress.” He sounded dazed. I had watched him bleed half to death without sounding anything but composed. “Although you are certainly not endearing yourself to Vaida.” “Oh?” I managed. “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.”
My fingers lingered against the strong line of his jaw. I had the most irrational wish for my gloves to dissolve into ash.
He should know better than to share his smiles with me. I should know better than to crave them.
At the root of all chaos is reason.
“Who did this to you?”
“What appeal can reason have in the face of your tears?”
It didn’t feel like betrayal. It felt like wandering through the woods for an endless night and finally stumbling into the dawn.
That with him, every aversion was a craving. That even though one day I would kneel before Jasad’s judges in the afterlife to account for it, I would not renounce a single moment of loving the Nizahl Heir.
How could I walk away after knowing how he felt in my arms? My name whispered in his wrecked voice—how could I allow anyone else to say my name after him?
I stroked the length of his face. The rhapsodies of poets and the lovelorn melodies. I understood them now. I lacked the talent for composition, so I traced the veins at the underside of his wrist, pressed kisses along the hard line of his jaw, memorized the shape of his smile. Maybe it would translate.
