( her stomach flips, soars, and promptly plummets in the span of a single breath, her hope an injured bird that doesn't dare to try taking flight a second time. selfish, paul says, and it feels like revisiting a graveyard of heartbreak: the vengeful bite of wood at her back, the darkling's hands staining her body with his resentment, kiss-bruised by the taste of his loathing. held in contempt, even as she was held in want, like a bad sugar craving that rots the teeth, like the euphoric high of a poison that corrodes the vein.
something filthy, only to ever be loved in the space between heartbeats. wanting makes us weak. paul doesn't have to say it for her to hear it. )
if they're so wonderful, why do you make "perfect" sound like the most terrible fate you could imagine for yourself?
( — because it does sound perfect, is the thing. what's so selfish about being happy? she could ask, if she were not already aware that happiness was the first part of her she martyred, the moment she became ravka's sun saint. )
in ravka, my people have a saying. "like calls to like." it means ... i was made in your image, and you were made in mine. what lives inside of me is drawn to what lives inside of you because we were made by the same hands, from the same blood and bone, by the same making at the heart of the world. i balance you, as you balance me.
that idea used to frighten me, but your dreams make it sound like it has a chance to be something beautiful. how could that be selfish?
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something filthy, only to ever be loved in the space between heartbeats. wanting makes us weak. paul doesn't have to say it for her to hear it. )
if they're so wonderful, why do you make "perfect" sound like the most terrible fate you could imagine for yourself?
( — because it does sound perfect, is the thing. what's so selfish about being happy? she could ask, if she were not already aware that happiness was the first part of her she martyred, the moment she became ravka's sun saint. )
in ravka, my people have a saying. "like calls to like." it means ... i was made in your image, and you were made in mine. what lives inside of me is drawn to what lives inside of you because we were made by the same hands, from the same blood and bone, by the same making at the heart of the world. i balance you, as you balance me.
that idea used to frighten me, but your dreams make it sound like it has a chance to be something beautiful. how could that be selfish?