Mehek’s Reviews > In the Veins of the Drowning > Status Update

“You have shone a light on me. You made me feel fury and terror and joy and longing. How do I curl myself back into the darkness after being so alive?”

“What I feel for you is beyond reason—beyond duty and desire. You have tipped my whole world on its side, and you are the one clear thing in the chaos.” His nose brushed the end of mine. “You. I want you.”

“I cannot even see her for the way you encompass me.” Emotion etched his face. “You fill my every sense. You stalk my waking mind. You make up the entirety of my dreams.“

“Need a hand?” “Lay a hand on my wife and you’ll lose it.” Theodore gripped the hilt of the dagger.

His lips were at my ear. “If I had known you then..“ Slowly, he spread his fingers wide and dug into my ribs, as if he wanted to touch as much of me as possible. “I would have worshipped you,” he said, husky and slow. “Laid you out over my bed like a goddess on her altar and gotten on my knees before you. And when we were done, after a very long time…”

Willing to marry that captain. No—you seemed eager to marry him.” Each word grew heavier and heavier with scathing anger. “Clinging to him, pressing your lips all over him when he’d done nothing to deserve you. What’s worse—I’m inexplicably envious of the dead bastard. He killed Sirens, and you would have him anyway, and it gnaws at me.”

“I called you a gnat, and I detest myself for it. I am the bug. A moth. And you are the moon. Drawing me, pulling me. But I’ll never be able to reach you without destroying myself. All I can do is pray for the day.” He gave me a pleading look. “Do you understand? I am doing my very best to keep a grip on myself, to keep my distance, but everything you do seems in service of thwarting that goal.”

His brow crumpled, a look like remorse filling his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he blurted. “You are… You’re one ambush after the next and I have yet to get my bearings.”

“A woman like Imogen.” I smoothed my undone tumble of hair. “There’s no need to insult me while I’m sitting right next to you.” Theodore’s mouth pinched. “Bloody Gods—I’m not. I’m saying that the empress will think I’m slighting her and her daughter if I bring such an uncommonly beautiful woman with me into the negotiations.”

“And the king—he doesn’t need to touch to heal flesh or to make plants flourish.” My attention snapped toward her. “I’m sorry—what?” “What?” Agatha reared back at my reaction. “Every time the king has healed me, he’s touched me.”