Iron Flame (The Empyrean, #2)

by Rebecca Yarros

doing. “I should have listened when you said you were the head of your own den. That’s why no one could fight your Right of Benefaction last year. Why the Empyrean allowed a juvenile to bond.” “Say it. Don’t just guess,” she demands. Even a slow breath won’t calm my racing heart. “Your scales aren’t really black.” “No.” Even now, her scales are changing, taking on the grayish hue of the stone around us. “But he is, and I so badly want to be just like him.” “Tairn.” It’s not hard to guess. “He doesn’t know. Only the elders do.” She lowers her head, resting it on the ground in front of me. “They revere him. He is strong, and loyal, and fierce.” “You are all those things, too.” I wobble under the strain of wielding but keep my balance, keep the power flowing into the stone. “You didn’t have to hide. You could have told me.” “If you didn’t figure it out, you weren’t worthy of knowing.” She huffs. “I waited six hundred and fifty years to hatch. Waited until your eighteenth summer, when I heard our elders talk of the weakling daughter of their general, the girl forecasted to become the head of the scribes, and I knew. You would have the mind of a scribe and the heart of a rider. You would be mine.” She leans into my hand. “You are as unique as I am. We want the same things.” “You couldn’t have known I would be a rider.” “And yet, here we are.” A thousand questions go through my head, none of which we have the time for, so I give her exactly what I wanted—to be seen for who and w...