The Serpent and the Wolf

Dismissing your emotions doesn’t make them disappear, it only gives them reason to rise later without your consent.

I have learned that home is seldom a place; it is people, the most unexpected of them, that give us roots.

Your father underestimated the weapon he built. And through his cruelty, he forced you to play for yourself and yourself alone. But I will play for you, if you will play for me, too.

I have collected a thousand words, and yet I cannot find a single one to tell you what comes alive inside of me when you are near.

The choices of others are not a burden I carry any longer, and neither is their shame.

I am the emperor of Asterya, too. And I’m going to get my wife back.

He looked at her now in a way no one else had ever looked at her, like all of her sharp edges just softened and glowed. Like to be loved by her was truly enough. And maybe she was destined to lose everything she’d ever loved, maybe it would shatter her into a thousand small pieces, but that single look felt worth breaking for.

Thrones are as precarious as one’s humanity.

You can inherit someone’s eyes, or their hair or their nose, but you cannot inherit their faults. You learn them. Which means you can unlearn them, too.

Even warlords were men, after all, and men were almost always their own downfall.

Reid of Mireh confused her, and yet he might have been the most transparent person she’d ever known.

You call it anger, you call it fear, but it is none of those things. What lies inside of you is pain. The kind that burns worlds to the ground.

No, my allegiances do not lie with him,” she whispered. A once-unutterable truth. “And if he ever knew I said that, he’d put my head on a pike.” Her neck was bared, her cheeks tearstained. What was one more piece of her soul?

Dominik had looked upon the world and decided it was his, and Vaasa knew nothing belonged to her at all.

Much to her dismay, Reid of Mireh slung off his black cloak and draped it around her shoulders. Warmth rushed over her, and she took a small breath.“I was born on the ice,” she reminded him. “That doesn’t mean you deserve to be cold.

The truth was that men could not tell a virgin from a hole in a tree, no matter what lies they told themselves.

You want to be missed more than you want to be loved?