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200 pages, ebook
First published November 24, 2020
"Hate that was so bright and hot that it was the first thing that truly warmed him."
"She was the only real thing in a land of ghosts."
"Playing the villain was the only thing he’d ever really excelled at."
"Feels as though she has to earn the crown on her head over and over again."
Villains were wonderful. They got to be cruel and selfish, to preen in front of mirrors and poison apples, and trap girls on mountains of glass. They indulged all their worst impulses, revenged themselves for the least offense, and took every last thing they wanted.
And sure, they wound up in barrels studded with nails, or dancing in iron shoes heated by fire, not just dead, but disgraced and screaming.
But before they got what was coming to them, they got to be the fairest in all the land.
Cardan had trusted Nicasia not to hurt him, which was ridiculous, since he well knew that everyone hurts one another and that the people you loved hurt you the most grievously. Since he was well aware that they both took delight in hurting everyone else that they could, how could he have thought himself safe?
The contempt made him feel as though she saw beneath all his sharp and polished edges. It reminded him of how his father and all the Court had seen him, before he learned how to shield himself with villainy.
And doomed as she was, he envied her whatever conviction made her stand there and defy him.
She ought to be nothing. She ought to be insignificant. She ought not to matter.
He had to make her not matter.
cause of severe painful death
THIS
^^^ WHOM THE FUCK MADE THIS I-
"So long as you're begging," he says.
“A heart of stone can still be broken.”
(GR ruined it, click on image for high quality)
↑ smol Cardan art to bless yo feed
by rosiethorns88