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Jameson heard the threat inherent in that sentence. As much as he wanted to know what the hell this was—how the hell any of this was possible-Avery was the one thing that he would not, could not risk.

Fear wasn't just ice in your veins or a beast at your throat. Fear was loving someone so fiercely that there was no point in your heart beating if hers did not.

- Games Untold: An Inheritance Games Collection (Jennifer Lynn Barnes)

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Isabella breadcrumbs in Sin & Redemption by Cora Reilly. Loved everything she said, one of the highlights of the book!

-Isa and I were cousins and liked each other, but we were different. She was three years younger than me, so we'd never hung out together. She, Flavio, and Valerio had always been inseparable, and I didn't want to meddle with their bond. Isa had been kidnapped three months ago. She'd never talked to me about the incident, and I had never dared to ask. Maybe it was time to change that.

- They were upping my protection. I'd seen Marcella and Isabella lose many freedoms after they became victims of our world.

My cousin Isa was indeed behind the reception desk, but she was immersed in a book propped up against the computer screen. "Your vigilance is lacking," Matteo said to Isa as he approached her and pressed a kiss to her temple. She made a face.

"Oh please, guards are everywhere." Her eyes moved past her father to me. She didn't smile, for which I was oddly grateful. I didn't really feel like pretend smiling either. Her glasses were propped up on top of her head, hugging the messy bun in which her maroon hair was put up. She reminded me a lot of my aunt Gianna.

- "I live off caffeine. I'm trying to channel my inner Stephen King without resorting to taking heroin or booze." She prepared an espresso.

- Her own kidnapping had been three months ago after Amo's wed-ding. From what I knew, neither she nor her mother had been hurt seriously during the incident, but I still noticed changes in Isa whenever I saw her. She was even more serious and withdrawn than before, always immersed in a book or scribbling on a notepad.

- She headed over to me with her espresso cup and a bottle of water. I realized she wasn't wearing shoes, only oversized wool socks she'd pulled up to her knees. One was pink, the other purple, and the only dash of color in her otherwise black outfit of leggings, pinafore dress, and turtleneck shirt.

Isa made a shocked face. "Dis-turbing but genius.

And if you don't like disturbing books, you shouldn't read mine."

- "I'm mostly working on short stories and novellas, but I'm also working on a book, yes."

- "My writing has become more jaded and darker.

It's also gotten better. I read somewhere that great writers are born from trauma. Not sure it's true, but writing has definitely become an outlet."

- "You can't change people. Some of them will always talk shit. They like to gossip. You are a survivor, so don't mind these idiots. Karma will pay them back."

- Isa shrugged. "It's still there, mainly at night or when I get startled by a noise, but it's better. I'm glad there's war, so I won't have to see any Falcones anytime soon." She gri-maced. "That part will be harder for you."

- "That's some serious sexism there, Dad," Isa said, crossing her arms. "Men can be victims of sexual abuse too. "I'm sure it can be the case, Isa,"Matteo said in a voice that suggested he wasn't convinced.

- Mom and I picked up Isabella at their apartment building in the early after-noon. Isabella gave me a brief smile before she climbed into the back seat. It had seemed honest.

- I picked up my phone and called Isa. She picked up after the second ring. We had never been super close, not like good friends. We had been too different, but since my capture Isa and I had begun spending more time with each other. Even if our experiences weren't quite the same, she too had experienced trauma through captivity. I admired the way she handled it: with her usual dose of sarcasm and stubbornness.

- Isa wasn't promised, and she'd never shown any obvious interest in anyone. For a while, l'd been convinced that she was into girls, but she insisted that wasn't the case. She was always very close-lipped when the topic came up.

- "And people call me dramatic," Isa said with a smile as she entered our apartment. "But I would never give birth in a forest."

- Isa bent over Ambra and strokedher dark hair with a finger. "She's really cute. Almost makes me want to have one of my own." At my shocked expression, she added, "One day in the distant future."

"Is there someone who might become the father?" | asked, Isa let out a sarcastic laugh. "Not even close.

Maybe I'll just rock the single mom gig. I'll use a sperm donor, so Dad won't have reason to kill anyone." "That would give you the primespot in the rumor mill."

"It's what people expect from me, considering who's my mom. So why should I disappoint them?"

"Is there someone who might become the father?" I asked, Isa let out a sarcastic laugh. "Not even close.

- Isa had more freedom than many mafia girls of her sta-tus, but since her kidnapping, her dad, Matteo, had definitely upped her protection a lot. I didn't want to cause her trouble.

- She blew out a breath. "Happiness is overrated."

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Glad to see another Alessio x Isabella fan 😁😁

I love Nino a lot and I'm eagerly waiting for Alessio's book since it is the same trope as Nino and Kiara- The marriage of convenience, strangers to lovers, family, book reader girls x mafia husbands. Man, when is Cora gonna release the book when my grandkids get married???

When I tell you I’m obsessed, I really mean it. You’re not alone, my friends are in love with this couple as well which is crazy because we barely know anything of them. I understand Cora has a lot of couples that need their book but she needs to step it up. I can’t wait to see Nino in father in law mode and I think Kiara will loveee Isa. I’m intrigued in how she’s going to write their story, technically now the Falcones & Vitiellos are at peace after Amo & Greta’s marriage so logically speaking it wouldn’t be forbidden for Isa and Alessio to date but most people aren’t going to like it. I can already see Nevio not like Alessio being a with Vitiello and Matteo - Gianna as well.

And yes probably by the time your grandkids get married 🤣

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Completely utterly obsessed with a couple with no book of their own 😭😭😭 come on Cora, love you but write a bit faster!!!

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One of Cardan letters to Jude after her exile 🩶

Jude,

You are in no mood for games. Very well. I am in no mood for them either.

Let me write it outright: you are pardoned. I revoke your banishment. I rescind my words.

Come home.

Come home and shout at me. Come home and fight with me. Come home and break my heart if you must.

Just come home.

Cardan

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Cardan ❤️

He sucks in a breath and gets down so we're both on the floor and he's on his hands and knees, making a cage of his body. He presses his mouth to the pulse point of my wrist, racing in time with my heart. "Mock me all you like. Whatever I imagined then, now it is I who would beg and grovel for a kind word from your lips." His eyes are black with desire. "By you, I am forever undone."

"My sweet nemesis, how glad I am that you returned."

"It's you I love," he says. "I spent much of my life guarding my heart. I guarded it so well that I could behave as though I didn't have one at all.

Even now, it is a shabby, worm-eaten, and scabrous thing. But it is yours."

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Our eyes meet, and something dangerous sparks.

He hates you, I remind myself.

"Kiss me again," he says, drunk and foolish. "Kiss me until I am sick of it." 💌

I feel those words, feel them like a kick to the stomach. He sees my expression and laughs, a sound full of mockery. I can't tell which of us he's laughing at.

He hates you. Even if he wants you, he hates you.

Maybe he hates you the more for it.

After a moment, his eyes flutter closed. His voice falls to a whisper, as though he's talking to himself. "If you're the sickness, I suppose you can't also be the cure." He drifts off to sleep, but I am wide awake.

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Jude x Cardan First Kiss 💌

"That's really why you hate me?" I demand. "Only that? There's no better reason?"

For a moment, I think he's ignoring me, but then I realize he's not answering because he can't lie and he doesn't want to tell me the truth.

"Well?" I say, lifting the crossbow again, glad to have a reason to reassert my position as the person in charge. "Tell me!"

He leans in and closes his eyes. "Most of all, I hate you because I think of you. Often. It's disgusting, and I can't stop.

I am shocked into silence.

"Maybe you should shoot me after all," he says, covering his face with one long-fingered hand.

"You're playing me," I say. I don't believe him. I won't fall for some silly trick, because he thinks I am some fool to lose my head over beauty; if I was, I couldn't last a single day in Faerie. I stand, ready to call his bluff.

Crossbows aren't great at close range, so I trade mine for a dagger.

He doesn't look up as I walk around the desk to him. I place the tip of the blade against the bottom of his chin, as I did the day before in the hall, and I tilt his face toward mine. He shifts his gaze with obvious reluctance.

The horror and shame on his face look entirely too real. Suddenly, I am not so sure what to believe.

I lean toward him, close enough for a kiss. His eyes widen. The look in his face is some commingling of panic and desire. It is a heady feeling, having power over someone. Over Cardan, who I never thought had any

"You really do want me," I say, close enough to feel the warmth of his breath as it hitches. "And you hate it." I change the angle of the knife, turning it so it's against his neck. He doesn't look nearly as alarmed by that as I might expect.

Not nearly as alarmed as when I bring my mouth to his.

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It was right, though. Gansey felt the feeling of time slipping - one last time. The sense of having done this before. He gently laid the backs of his hands on her cheeks. He whispered, "It'll be OK. I'm ready. Blue, kiss me."

The rain spattered about them, kicking up splashes of red-black, making the petals around them twitch. Dream things from Ronan's newly healed imagination piled around their feet. In the rain, everything smelled of these mountains in fall: oak leaves and hay fields, ozone and dirt turned over. It was beautiful here, and Gansey loved it. It had taken a long time, but he'd ended up where he wanted after all.

Blue kissed him.

He had dreamt of it often enough, and here it was, willed into life. In another world, it would just be this: a girl softly pressing her lips to a boy's. But in this one, Gansey felt the effects of it at once. Blue, a mirror, an amplifier, a strange half-tree soul with ley line magic running through her. And Gansey, restored once by the ley line's power, given a ley line heart, another kind of mirror. And when they were pointed at each other, the weaker one gave.

Gansey's ley line heart had been gifted, not grown.

He pulled back from her.

Out loud, with intention, with the voice that left no room for doubt, he said, "Let it be to kill the demon."

Right after he spoke, Blue threw her arms tightly around his neck. Right after he spoke, she pressed her face into the side of his. Right after he spoke, she held him like a shouted word. Love, love, love.

He fell quietly from her arms.

He was a king.

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Will being Will:

I’m gonna kill her. She had Emmy for the last thirty-six hours. No warning. No discussion. No explanation, other than some excuse about needing one last girls’ night as a single woman. I hadn’t talked to Em, because Rika took all of their cell phones, hiding with Alex, Banks, Winter, Emory, and Ryen at Delcour since yesterday morning. I mean, what the fuck? I just got her back, and fear was nipping at the corner of my brain, worried that she changed her mind about marrying me. If I couldn’t periodically remind her of how hot I was. 

Misha plopped down next to me, and I took a swig of my water bottle. “You’ll see her in an hour,” he assured me.

I took another drink. “Rika could’ve warned us she was taking all the women overnight.” “It gives you a chance to miss her.”

“I’ve missed her long enough,” I retorted, watching Michael tie his shoes and then tip back the bottle of Kirin. “I’m done missing her.”

“You think if you don’t see her enough, she’ll have time to change her mind? “No.” Yes. My cousin was smart. I smirked at him, and he smiled.

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Emory & Will’s proposal:

He started to walk away, my heart ripping in two, and I shook my head. No. he couldn’t let me go. He couldn’t move on without me. Everything we’ve been through, everything meant something. It all meant something. Didn’t it? This wasn’t where we ended. Nothing was over.

“Will you marry me?” I asked, breathing hard, and my heart hammering. Slowly, I climb to my feet and turn to face him, seeing him stopped.

He stood there, frozen, not turning around, but that was okay. I wasn’t sure I could do this if he looked at me. God, my mouth was so dry. I couldn’t swallow.

“I love you,” I said, and I could see people filming us with their phones out of the corner of my eye, but I didn’t care. “I am crazy for you, and I’m sure I’ll kill you at some point, but …. God, I love you so much, and I want you to marry me.” More tears streamed on my face as I choked out the words. “Marry me, Will Grayson.”

I rushed up and hugged his back, wrapping my arms around him. “Can you marry me? Can I marry you?” 

He spun around, picked me off my feet, and kissed me, pressing his lips to mine and backing me up into a parked car. I wrapped my arms and legs around him, reveling in his strong mouth and the warmth of his body. I moaned, kissing him again and again. “Is that a yes?”

He chuckled and dropped me to my feet. I blinked against the rain, watching him, dig into his pocket for something. He pulled it out, pinching a vintage Victorian ring.

“It’s very old,” Will said, slipping it into my finger, his hand shaking.

“It’s your family’s?”

“It’s yours now.” He met my eyes. “It’s been yours for nearly ten years.”

“I’m marrying you,” I whispered. He nodded. “Bout time you caught up.”