Of Flames & Fallacies (The Arterian #1)

by Courtney Whims

“The one son.” Her voice grows louder. “Chosen to lead them all. Wasn’t a son but a maid.”

“Until binds of death did that grave deed bade…” With each word, her tone tips toward hysteria.

Five things I see. Four things I feel. Three things I hear. Two things I smell. One thing I taste.

“Listen to me!” my mother shouts over the roaring flames. “Find Cole, and take her back to the Dragon Lands. You aren’t safe here. Don’t come back. Trust no one!”

Once bonded, a pair cannot be separated. They become intrinsically one. Shall one die, the other shall too.

Perhaps death was crueler to those it left behind. To miss, and wonder, and long for. To hold all of those memories in the palm of your hand, desperate to not let them go, but painful to keep them all the same.

What you are to me, I may never be able to justify in the significance of words. But you are, always have been and always will be, my beginning and my end. And every breath of my existence in between.

“Gods, I always want you. Every beat of my heart is a profession of what life you instill in me. The day I no longer want you will be the day I’m buried in the ground, far from feelings or thoughts. Because it’s you. Always you.”

“Sometimes love is our greatest strength. And sometimes it’s our greatest weakness. It all just depends on how you wield it.”