Iron Flame (The Empyrean, #2)

by Rebecca Yarros

“Touch me and I swear to the gods, I’ll cut your fucking hands off and let the quadrant sort you out in the next round of challenges, Dain Aetos.” My words earn more than a couple of gasps, but I don’t give a shit who hears me.

“You should take her at her word. In fact…” Xaden doesn’t bother to lower his voice. “If you don’t, I’ll take personal offense. She made her choice, and it wasn’t you. It will never be you. I know it. She knows it. The whole quadrant knows it.”

“Secrets make for poor leverage. They die with the people who keep them.”

“You do not have the right to burn what is mine.” His words consume all my mental pathways as Tairn lets loose an earth-shattering roar in Solas’s direction. Everyone slams their hands over their ears, including me, my entire body vibrating with the sound, hot air blasting the back of my neck.

“If Solas comes near you again, he knows I will devour his human whole and let him rot within me while his heart still beats, and then I’ll take the eye I so graciously left him.”

“But I’m begging you, Violet. Don’t offer me your body unless you’re offering me everything. I want you more than I want to fuck you. I want those three little words back.”

“Even the smallest dragon does not answer to the most powerful of humans, which you are not.”

“You love me,” he whispers. “Stop reminding me. I thought we agreed not to fight tonight.” I snuggle in deeper, his warmth lulling me into that sweet middle space between wakefulness and oblivion. “Maybe you’re not the one I’m reminding.”

“We’re no longer friends, and I’ll be ready to talk when the sight of you doesn’t make me want to bury my knife in your chest all the way to the fucking hilt.”

“Violence, remember it’s only the body that’s fragile. You are unbreakable.”

“You’re currently a prize annoyance.”

“I do. I’m sorry if you expect me to do the noble thing. I warned you. I’m not sweet or soft or kind, and you fell anyway. This is what you get, Violet—me. The good, the bad, the unforgivable. All of it. I am yours.” His arm wraps around the small of my back, holding me steady and close. “You want to know something true? Something real? I love you. I’m in love with you. I have been since the night the snow fell in your hair and you kissed me for the first time. I’m grateful my life is tied to yours because it means I won’t have to face a day without you in it. My heart only beats as long as yours does, and when you die, I’ll meet Malek at your side. It’s a damned good thing that you love me, too, because you’re stuck with me in this life and every other that could possibly follow.”

I will not fucking die today.

“I chose you last year for that brilliance, and now you’d like to be congratulated like it’s something new? How odd.”

The problem with mankind is we too often find our souls to be a fair price for power.

Defeating a dark wielder begins with knowing where they rank in age and experience. Initiates have reddish rings to their eyes that come and go depending on how often they drain. Asims’ eyes fluctuate in degrees of red, and their veins distend when riled. Sages’—those responsible for initiates—eyes are permanently red, their veins perpetually distended toward their temples, expanding with age. Mavens—their generals—have never been captured for examination.