Rai (is hard to please) > Recent Status Updates

“Maybe he’s seen enough to know the truth about me—I want all my lives back, but I’m not sure I deserve them.”

“If I die making sure you are able to hold someone you love in your arms again, it will be a worthy sacrifice.” Vara smiles sadly. “I’ve given you so little,” she says. “Let me give you this.”

“I wouldn’t know I was Balavan’s daughter.”

Kadruuuuuuu

“Redemption,” she says. “Hope. Trust that you can make a better future than we did. Our followers wanted to turn us into gods.” A single tear tumbles from her lashes and crawls down her cheek. “And when we agreed to let them, we turned ourselves into monsters.”

“He doesn’t answer. He just stands up and starts walking. I scramble to follow him and wonder if I’m so broken that I can’t tell the difference between the people who care about me and the people who want to kill me. Because right now everyone feels like an enemy.”

“I wonder if my life will ever be about anything except survival. If I will ever have a chance to live for happiness instead.”

“If she were dead, wouldn’t I know it? Wouldn’t there be a piece of my heart that vanished along with her soul? Wouldn’t I feel the space it made?”

“The Raja governs them,” I say. “But Bagharani made them feel like they belonged. Your father would do well to remember that.”

“For the first time it strikes me how lonely it must be to be that deadly. To be that feared. At this thought Kadru’s gaze finds mine. And she smiles.”

“Each weapon is a work of art, and I wonder what drives the impulse to make the instruments of death beautiful. A jewel-encrusted dagger. A golden-pommeled sword.
A kiss.
Like we can make murder less ugly by performing it with something splendid.”

“I hadn’t yet learned that with Gopal, power needed to be wielded subtly if it was to be wielded at all.”

“I learned a long time ago that tears are the thieves of power.”

“He must have visited Gopal when I was a child.”

Father? Brother? Deven’s brother??

“Aw. Implied threats of violence against her future spouse. Chastity’s heart swelled.”

“It was all so inconvenient, having people who cared about you when all you really wanted was to bottle up your feelings and never, ever speak of them.”

“Luke. I tried to kill you.”
“I know. I was there.”

“She’d admitted her attraction; she’d hinted at feeling more; and now, his bloodthirsty little murderess was openly reluctant to end his existence. Progress!”

“Don’t psychoanalyse me, you prick.”
“How am I supposed to support you in overcoming your insecurities—”
“Call me insecure again and I will scoop out your eyeballs with a silver spoon.”
“—if I don’t put effort into understanding you?”

“It had occurred to him, while he was fighting for his life last night, that unless Chastity had a questionable moral compass—which he wouldn’t necessarily mind—she must be a little… confused.”

“She was a bloodthirsty fucking murderer.
His heart sang.”

(…) “She had the element of surprise, and beneath his predatory charm, he was just a rabid animal.
One hand slid into her pocket without permission, feeling for that acorn again. A nagging little voice in her head reminded her that humans were animals too.”

“That’s the thing about poison. The deadliest ones always come from the inside.”

“We have a deal,” he says. “But you would do well to remember that you are at my mercy.”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” I say. “And you would do well to remember that you are at mine.”

“Her comment makes me wonder how much of our anger toward each other is because we’ve been looking through a window in the dark instead of in daylight—we thought we were seeing each other, but it turns out we were only seeing ourselves.”

“It’s a bitter irony that my whole life I’ve felt like I’m too deadly to find happiness. But now, when it really counts, I’m not nearly deadly enough.“

“It looks deceptively close, doesn’t it?” Everything in my life is deceptively close. Especially Deven.”

“Taking care of Mani—loving him—is the only thing that has held the darkness at bay. Iyla thinks he makes me weak, but he doesn’t. He makes me human.”

“On the day I was supposed to kill him, he was memorizing the things that I love.”

“It’s a lie, our palms pressed together, our fingers entwined like we belong to each other. But it’s a lovely lie, and I wish it never had to end.”

“I don’t want to be a killer,” I told Gopal.
He laughed and laughed. “You already are, rajakumari. You already are.”