The Serpent and the Wolf

“Tell me that isn’t the truth. Tell me you haven’t already discovered there is nothing I won’t do or give for you.”

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

“Being the ruler of anything is a corrupting job, and no man walks out of it the same as when he walked into it. If you value anything about yourself, which I gather you do, given the seeming resilience of your ego, you’ll settle for being a councilor and mind your own.”

“Would you like to stay? This shower is big enough for two, and it isn’t a bed, so if we’re going by the aforementioned rule, it wouldn’t technically be breaking our agreement if I took you in here.”

“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.”

“Pick one you love. For if you don’t love it, it will mean nothing to you, and it must mean something to you.”

"If I don’t find her, I will burn all of Asterya to the ground.”

“I want to live, Reid. I want to live long enough to see more of the world before Dominik erases all the color from it.”

“The truth is that all I can think about is sliding my hand between your legs until you come so hard you forget you ever hated me.”

“Your mother made this arrangement, Vaasalisa, not your brother. She spoke directly with my own mother. While I made the formal request of our councilors, it wasn’t your brother’s idea, or mine.”

“The black mist leaking on the tips of your fingers originates from my home of Mireh. It is Veragi magic, and I know a master of it.”

“I have waited a lifetime to watch it. To see each speck of fear dance in your eyes as you come to terms with your greatest nightmare, for you have found every way to witness mine.”

“To conquer you would surely leave me dead, Wild One. But you have gravely bruised my ego.”

“I suspect you could stop my heart in any color.”

“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.”

“This has nothing to do with how much I’d like to have you in my bed, though I do hope you’ll find interest in that, too, Wild One.”

“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.”

“Then it’s one less thing we’ll have to argue about. Marital spats are no fun, or so I’ve heard. Not that my wife has been around long enough for me to discover their level of joy.”