#ove spoilers
but how have we not talked about rosalind lang???
“You would have done the same,” Rosalind rasped.
Juliette sat up straighter. She looked to the door, to the slight gap left ajar. “What?”
“I love him,” Rosalind mumbled. A bead of sweat had broken out along her hairline. She was delirious, probably running a fever. “I love him, that is all.”
“Who?” Juliette demanded. “Rosalind, you must—”
“It doesn’t matter,” she interrupted, almost slurring her words. “What does any of it matter? It is done. It is done.”
Man, she truly loved him. She took lashes to keep his name a secret.
“How much easier it would have been,” she whispered, “if it had been you instead. How good you are. How noble.”
And she entered this “companionship” fully aware of what he was and what he was capable of and it hurts it hurts at how humanized she was.
She merely thought she had found a companion. An equal. Someone to see her—her, just as she was, not a Scarlet, not a dancer, but Rosalind.
It was her fault for thinking that she was enough to change someone. Monsters and money and the city on strings—up against Rosalind, who hadn’t even wanted to go along with it in the first place, who had only done so out of hope that he would be happy once he had the city, that they could be happy and no one could touch them. The world in one palm and her in another.
She was foolish to think that her friends could be kept safe, that she could be the hand guiding him away from chaos. She had never possessed any power here. She had never mattered. Days had passed in that safe house with no change. In the end, this was the harsh truth: Rosalind had left everyone she cared about for someone who was not coming. Rosalind had hurt everyone she cared about, risked their very lives, all for someone who was long gone.
And when Rosalind nudged into the apartment, she found it entirely vacated. She couldn’t help it. She laughed. She laughed and she laughed, tracing her eyes along every missing thing.
BITCH I COULDNT BREATHE READING THIS, HOW MANY HUMAN BEINGS HAVE DONE THAT? SACRIFICED EVERYTHING FOR SOMEONE THEY LOVE ONLY TO FIND OUT THEY DIDNT FEEL THE SAME? CHLOE GONG WAS THAT REALLY NECESSARY
“We can live here forever, can’t we?”
She had twirled with those sheer curtains, splaying the lace across her head like some bridal veil. Had thrown her arms up, delirious in her happiness.
“Don’t get too excited, love. We’re only here until we rise higher.”
“Must we? Can we not live a quaint existence? Can you not be a good man?”
“A good man? Oh, Roza—” Rosalind trailed her hands along the bookshelf, finding only dust, even though it could not have been more than a few days since the worn paperbacks were cleared away. “Ya chelovek bol’nói. Ya zloi chelovek. Neprivlekatel’nyi ya chelovek.”
ROSALIND LANG JUST WANTED TO BE LOVED, EVERYTHING ELSE BE DAMNED
“I would have abandoned them for you,” she admitted to the empty room. She had always known who he was. She had always known him as a White Flower. The truth was that she hadn’t cared. The blood feud did not stoke a fury in her heart like it did to others in Shanghai. She had not grown up here, had no ties to the people. The fighting on the streets seemed like a show she might catch in the theaters; the gangsters running their errands were interchangeable faces she could never keep track of. Kathleen had a kind heart, Juliette had blood ties, but Rosalind? What had this family ever given Rosalind to deserve her loyalty? Incompetence from her father and irreverence from the Cais. Year after year, the bitterness festered so deeply that it had developed into a physical hurt—one that stung as much as the current injuries on her back.
Had they just accepted her, had they seen her for what she could do, she could have offered the Scarlet Gang her life. Instead, they gave her scars and wounds—she was marked if she bit her tongue and stayed; she was marked if she tried to make something of herself and strayed. Scars upon scars upon scars. She was a girl with nothing else now.
i can’t even put to words how much this is true. the utter realization that you’re all on your own now. that once you had hoped for a future with someone only to find out that it was not the same way for them.
Goodbye, dear Rosalind. Better to part now than when the havoc really begins.
AND THAT PARTING NOTE HE LEFT HER IN EXCHANGE FOR ALL THE LASHES SHE TOOK TO KEEP HIS IDENTITY A SECRET.
“Don’t judge me,” Rosalind said. Her eyes flickered between Juliette and Roma. “Not when you clearly did the same.”
Juliette turned to Rosalind, her eyes stinging. “I decided to love a White Flower,” she managed, each word slicing at her tongue. “You helped a White Flower set destruction onto this city. It is not the same!”
“I loved him,” Rosalind said. She denied none of it. She was too prideful to deny it once she had been caught. “Tell me, if Roma Montagov had asked, wouldn’t you have done it too?”
i mean the only difference was roma was noble which is why juliette was spared of that choice. lest we forget, juliette killed tyler for roma. roma doesn’t have to ask, juliette would have done it in a heartbeat. but we all know that juliette and roma, being heirs and different from their kin, had strong moral compasses; proven til the end.
in a city that only knew how to hate, they were all desperate to keep and protect the love they had and that’s what makes it so painful.
idk man i just relate so much with a character who JUST WANTED SOMEONE FOR HERSELF, TO TRULY SEE HER, something she can call entirely her own and she is JUST SO HUMAN. she was the perfect example as to how roma and juliette’s love story was literally worth dying for. not everyone gets to find their soulmate. and that’s okay. her arc finished and her knowing that having her sister is enough. i am at peace with that. but bitch how the fuck does chloe gong expect me to get over this book???
First and Last Interactions of the Scarlets
Juliette Cai and Rosalind Lang // Chapter 1, These Violent Delights (2020) // Chapter 46, Our Violent Ends (2021)
Juliette Cai and Kathleen Lang // Chapter 1, These Violent Delights (2020) // Chapter 37, Our Violent Ends (2021)
OVE SPOILERS
how do you know you’re a dumb reader? when you disregard all the clues given by the author
here i thought those dates were just decorations.
everything hurts what the fuck, like imagine being separate for how many years thinking you were betrayed by the other and then being together for a while and everything falling apart immediately and then a mutual period of hate but undeniable love for each other for four months including getting married but that was it like that is the end of their story like bitch that love story is truly a great love what the fuck fuck me
