Iron Flame (The Empyrean, #2)

by Rebecca Yarros

Revolution tastes oddly…sweet.

Because love, at its root, is hope. Hope for tomorrow. Hope for what could be. Hope that the someone you’ve entrusted your everything to will cradle and protect it. And hope? That shit is harder to kill than a dragon.

“She doesn’t like anyone but Xaden, and she only tolerates me, though I’m growing on her.” “Like a tumor,” she replies

“Garrick Tavis. Xaden Riorson.” Captain Fitzgibbons’s voice carries over the formation as he reads from the death roll. “Well, this is awkward,” Xaden calls out. And every head in the courtyard turns in our direction.

“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.”

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

“You’d have thought your mother would have held off the storm last year, considering you were crossing.” “Clearly you don’t know my mother.” She wouldn’t call the storm to kill me like a coward, but she sure as hell wouldn’t stop it to save me, either.

“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.”

“Stop playing around and end it,” I say through our bond, using it for the first time since Resson. “Always so violent.” He thumbs a drop of blood off the split in his lower lip, his gaze flashing to mine, and I swear I see a hint of a smile before he turns on Jarrett.

“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.”