My whole heart (deemed and delivered a crime)
Barely one in every hundred Grisha are lucky enough to have their soulmate’s first words etched into their skin. Otkazat'sya never receive the indelible ink, instead left to scramble for a soulmate who rarely, if ever, appears.Jesper dreamed of receiving his ink as a young boy. The chances of him meeting his soulmate were slim to none, the chances of those words appearing even slimmer. When he wakes on his thirteenth birthday with a burning rash circling his wrist, barely legible words beneath the blisters, he’s ecstatic. When the skin heals and he finally reads them, he’s terrified. Because the words on his skin aren’t a greeting, they aren’t exciting. The words on his skin are a warning.
'He's going to kill me.'-Wylan Van Eck had been dreading his wedding. The engagement to a Mercher twelve years his senior (‘only’ his father had said, as if he should be grateful) seemed too easy an ending for him after years of torment. So, when his wedding night suddenly included hands too tight around his throat, an ungainly escape aided by a candlestick, and a midnight sprint through the city into the pits of the Barrel, well, that made much more sense.
Title from 'Which witch' by Florence and the Machine