Nicole

Zsadist was a former slave, locked away in a cell and tortured for years, and still bears the scars from his time there. He is filled with an icy rage and violence. He feels disgusting, tainted, and not good enough for Bella. He believes his scars and blood band slave tattoos are a physical manifestation of everything wrong within him and unworthy of Bella.

“I…I can’t get clean. I don’t want you to get dirty, too.” He lifted his wrist and blood oozed down his forearm. “See? Look at the dirt. It’s all over me. Inside of me.”

I want you, but it’s not right. You shouldn’t be with me. You’re cleaner than that.”

Bella is described several times as a lady, kind, lovely, a woman of worth.

She’d been beautiful and soft and kind, a regal, aristocratic female from a privileged background.

Phury, Zsadist’s twin, has red, gold and black hair, a prosthetic leg, is not angry like his twin, considered noble and honorable, and like Zsadist he “ended up bonded with the same female”

Holy shit, this was trouble—of the bury-your-dead variety. Two bonded males tied to the same female were a lethal combination to begin with. Make that two warriors and you had the potential for serious injury.

Phury loves Bella but she constantly rejects him and he’s angry at first because he thinks Z only wants Bella for sex.

As Bella’s eyes lifted to his, his skin got too small for his skeleton. Which was what rejection did to a male. Just shriveled you right up.

Like a total lunatic, he briefly considered going back in and fighting Zsadist for the right to lie next to her. He could see himself throwing the hand-to-hand around, having an old-fashioned cohntehst with his twin over who was allowed to have her.

And then the very next sentence is this:

But this was not the Old Country. And females had the right to choose who they sought out. Who they slept beside. Who they mated with.

At one point Zsadist rescues Bella after she’s kidnapped, cradles her to his chest, won’t put her down even after being shot in the leg and injured, and when Bella awakens she thinks this:

He had come for her. He had come for her….

He even sings to her when she’s hurt. I completely forgot he could sing lol

On the rare occasions he sang, the sounds that came out of his mouth were stunners, capable of making time grind to a halt and then slide into infinity.

THERE IS EVEN A BIT ABOUT A NECKLACE. I can’t stop laughing lol. When Z thinks he won’t see Bella again he finds her necklace in some rubble, a small tiny pendant on a fragile gold chain, and wears it as a reminder of her. (A part of me thinks Azriel may have gone back for the necklace and he actually has it now.)

“I wanted to give you back this.” He pulled her necklace out of his pocket. “I was going to leave it with you that first night, but then I thought…Well, anyway, I wore it until I couldn’t get it around my throat anymore. Now I just carry it around.”

I love you, he mouthed. She smiled back at him and pressed something into his hand. Her necklace. “You keep this on you always,” she whispered. “For good luck.”

Sarah is about to give us ACOTAR’s version of Lover Awakened, the best of the entire series. Elriel is going to serve us the Bella and Zsadist, light/dark trope we deserve. Because these parallels are…interesting.

Her skin was so fine, the idea of marring it in any way froze him.

“You let an animal into the most beautiful part of you.”

Better than nothing was not good enough for her, but his releasing into her seemed like a sacrilege.

But Bella tells him several times that what he considers most ugly about himself, his scars, his body, his arousal…she thinks is beautiful.

“What if I told you I thought you were beautiful?”

You’re beautiful when you touch yourself.”

“Oh but my poor Lulu the way she treated him… HE DESERVES TO BE HAPPY🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺” BUT MY GIRL ELAIN DOESN’T? HOW WOULD YOU FEEL IF EVERYONE AROUND YOU WOULD FORCE A GUY ON YOU?!!! Omfg, the fact that y’all are WOMEN makes me feel DISGUSTED!