Dark of the West (Glass Alliance)

And there’s nothing you could do to make me care for you less. Nothing at all.

My anger reaches a new level, one I didn’t know was possible without an entire forest burning around me.

And then she smiles again, the silent promise of war

I’ve heard enough truths tonight, all of them stealing from me, darkening my past, destroying my present, condemning whatever’s to come. I’ve seen the game and it’s too large for me.

You need to use your head, Athan. You think only a step ahead when you should be thinking ten. You need to think on the ground the way you do in the air.”

I almost laugh in his face. He doesn’t know a thing about the air. In the air, you react within the space of a second, you make up everything in the breath of a brutal, terrified moment, and if you’re lucky, someone else ends up burning instead of you. There’s no such thing as ten steps ahead.

Me betraying Ali’s trust for a chance to save her.

I pretend I’m not shattered by guilt, struggling to be stronger than the fear in me, because now I have no choice. I have to finish this betrayal and actually save her.

this summer.”

She’ll smile at me with that secret smile that says everything and nothing, then disappears, making me try harder, making me desperate to win it back again. Instead of the dreamlike vision she’s become, she’ll be real and welcoming and brighter than the nightmare

There’s a protest inside me somewhere, that noble part of me that feels whatever I’ve
done so far is enough of a betrayal, and anything more only amounts to the kind of sin that can’t ever be forgiven. But the protest doesn’t come. I want to see her again, more than I want to think about whatever comes after.

I don’t want to witness his grief, nor do I want him to see my pity

He fires a pistol at the wood boards. Over and over, like he might right the world with a single, flawless shot.