bibs’s Reviews > The Jasad Crown > Status Update

“In the center of the bridge, the mist melted around four figures.
One of them took an unsteady step toward him, curls catching on the rising wind. A slow grin spread over her face. Dark eyes fastened on to him as the sun cleared the last of the mist from Sirauk Bridge.
And Arin finally allowed himself to fall.
“Welcome home, Suraira.”

I can't breathe I can't breathe I can't breathe

"Arin pulled his necklace from under his vest and wrapped his fingers around the worn beads of the fig. It never left his neck, dangling inches above the black raven etched over his heart."

Take my fucking heart alright it's not like I need it to survive

"Time had continued to turn after Nuzret Kamel, and everyone turned with it. Everyone except Arin. (...) in every other sense, Arin had not taken a single step beyond this spot in ten years. (...) No one had ever emerged from the mist."

🤧

“Arin didn’t mind the added travel time of coming on horseback. It gave him the opportunity to stop by the market in Har Adiween and buy out the stock from the vendor selling sesame seed candies. She liked to joke that Arin’s one visit to Sirauk every year kept her in business.”

Even when he hated those fuckass candies,,, for ten years oh my god

"How in those early days, before he knew what was happening, he would lose his breath at the thought of a future without her. A future where the guests would be gone, but so would his new home (...) “A place where he could rest until he was old and weary, where he could only sleep with his hand settled over her heart, because even so many years later, that steady pulse was the only pillar Arin would ever lean on."

"Arin had never given much thought to what he might face if love ever found him. (...) He knew the general shapes of it. (...) Nobody warned him.
Why hadn’t they told him that love was not a soft and gentle wind, but a storm determined to rip you apart and build its home in the wreckage?"

😞

“He is an excellent Supreme,” Lateef said solicitously."

Of course he is, I never doubted him 🥹

"She chose you for Lukub’s throne, and it is our duty to uphold her wishes.”

He'd have been so proud of her 🥹

"The cuts and scrapes on his body disappeared—including the scar on his jaw from Soraya’s murder attempt.Arin threw his head back, vines of magic winding up his throat. Arin’s hair—the beautiful silver hair floating around his face like his personal storm cloud (...) began to darken. (...) I drank in the sight of Arin one last time. I chose you, I thought. Even if it might not seem like it now."

DONT DO THIS

“Let me go, Arin. I can’t cross the fortress, do you understand? If I choose to stay, it will not mean the death of a few hundred or thousand. It will spell the end of our entire world." “I can find another way,” Arin said, and it was the truth. “Give me time. We can mitigate your magic, seal it off. I have the cuff—”
“No!" (...)
“If you will not stay, then take me with you.”

FUCKING HELL