The Ashes and the Star-Cursed King

Maybe the king always knew that his greatest love would be his ruination. Maybe he knew it the moment he met her. He’d know it the second time he died, too.

Committing him to memory. Making sure that every movement, every breath, every sound he made was marked onto my soul. I wanted to capture him like rainwater.

“You lied to me,” I ground out. “My entire life, you told me the world was a cage. But it was you that put me there.

I took his arm and very subtly wiped the sweat from my palms on his sleeve. “Nice,” he muttered into my ear, as we followed Ketura out the door.

“Walk. With me. Now.” “Is that an order?” “Is that an attitude? You’ve been spending too much time with Oraya.”

“I love you,” I said. Because it was still true. After everything, it was still true.

“No,” he said. “We get to use the power we got from them to make this kingdom into something they fucking despise. What’s the point of any of this if there’s nothing to actually fight for?”

Raihn swooped down beside me, and I chanced a glance at him. He was grinning with pure, childlike joy. That smile—it made my stomach clench.

The king knew, in this moment, that his greatest love would also be his ruination, and that both would come in the unlikely form of a young human woman.