The Ashes and the Star-Cursed King (Crowns of Nyaxia Book 2)

“You have nothing but me,” I said. “And yet, you’d let me go?”

“I have nothing but you,” he murmured. “So I am letting you go.”

But this place—us—we will always be here for you to come back to.

There will come a day when Nyaxia will bring a reckoning.

“Treasure that flower,” she said. “No one will ever be able to hurt you again.”

“Ah,” she said. “I see. Much has changed, I suppose, since the last time you begged me for his life.”

As a young man, I used to think that bravery was the absence of fear. No. I’d learned since then that the absence of fear was only stupidity.

Of course it was love.

What else could it be, for someone to see that much of you? To see so much beauty in the parts of someone that they hate in themselves?

“I’m Alya,” she said. “I’m your aunt.”

Challenging has never scared us before

“Now please, Highness,” she said, “tell me we’re about to take back our damned kingdom.”

In response, I found myself smirking.

“Why else would we come all this way?”