He was beautiful in a way that hurt me, but it was the sweetest pain I ever knew, better even than the scars I took on my naming day.

If there had been another female for him since we arrived in Salvation, I needed to cut off all her hair and beat her half to death. The strength of that impulse scared me, and I took a step back. Deuce the girl was every bit as vicious as the Huntress, it seemed

I swept down the stairs to find Fade waiting for me at the bottom. His dark eyes widened, and for the first time since I'd known him, he was speechless. He stared up at me like I was everything he ever wanted.

Edmund cleared his throat. "Pretty as a picture, isn't she?"Fade only nodded. His hungry stare brought color to my cheeks, and I was conscious of the warmth of his fingers when he touched me. Just on the arm, but my skin was bare, and it felt shocking, intimate, too darking in front of my foster parents.

If I ever win you," he said, anger bright in his pale eyes, "it will be because you want me more. Not because he's gone. I'm nobody's second best.

Stalkers lips curled into a sneer. "You won't make a move without him, huh? That's embarrassing.""No," I said softly. "It just hurts because you wish it was you.

Stalker put his hands on my shoulders - and for a moment, his pale eyes blazed with the power of what he felt for me. The reflected head warmed me where I hadn't even know I was cold. Then his golden, spiky lashes swept down, veiling his thoughts. I shouldn't let this boy comfort me when I'd rejected him. Weakness made me selfish, but I didn't resist when he pulled me against him.

Beautiful. And ugly. The world is always both.

But courage wasn't an absence of fear; it was fighting despite the knot in your stomach.