Fire Falling (Air Awakens, #2)

by Elise Kova

Hollow eyes and wild hair were framed by black armor. It was the visage of a warrior and a sorcerer.

Lightning was fire in the sky, lightning was brilliant, lightning was fast, and lightning cut the heavens.

The woman sitting in the saddle now had to find a heart crafted of black steel. She had to survive if for no other reason than to spite the world.

“I think,” she started softly, “that I like playing with fire.”

“I was afraid I’d lost you.” The words were an arrow into the heart of the silence that had been flourishing between them. And words, like arrows, once let go, could not be taken back.

Titles were more than just words. They were walls and barriers and parapets to lift up some and keep others out.

Magic, she was discovering, was like poetry. Once you understood the logic, the meter, the rhyme behind it, you could embellish upon it and make it your own.

“I am not your enemy,” she whispered in a disturbingly calm voice. “So I cannot die this day. I will not die until you see the truth.”

“Even something very small can cast a large shadow when it is close to the sun.”

“You foolish, amazing, astounding woman, you saved us all.”

Of course, the day she realized she was hopelessly in love with a man was also the day she would be given additional proof of him being a rather twisted ass.

“You will march to victory, and it will be won upon your silver wings. But the winds of change you will set free will also shatter that tender hope upon which you fly. You will lose your dark sentry,”

Vhalla wasn’t sure if she had ever met a man who could be so astonishingly smart about seemingly everything and yet so daft about the person whom he was supposed to be more connected with than anyone in the world.

“You’re a rather impossible woman.” “Pot meet kettle.”

“I love you,” he repeated, a determined fire lighting his eyes. “It is one of the worst things I could ever do,” Aldrik confessed.

“If you want to make the widely accepted appropriate decision, then leave now, have mercy and end this before you entice me further. Because I promise, this will never be easy—for either of us—and I refuse to love you halfway.”

“Vhalla, I need her in so many ways, Mother help me,” Aldrik groaned. “I need her as my redemption, I need her kindness, I need her forgiveness, I need her smiles, I need her humanity, I need her ignorance, I need her innocence, and, yes . . . Mother Sun, yes, I need her as a man.”

“I can’t even . . . form sentences. This, you and I, my being pushed beyond the personal hell I built for myself, has been good. I’ve felt more like a man in the past months, weeks, in the past days being with you, than I have in years. As though I can enjoy things without—guilt. Good isn’t even the right word to say for it. You’ve let me be the person I always wished I could be and, I . . .”

“You’re not someone to live in darkness or sorrow.” Larel reclined on the bed, inviting Vhalla to do the same. “You’re a light that can shine brighter than even the sun.”

“I love him, but I am only death. I am death to everyone I love. Someday I will be the death of him.”

Aldrik—the crown prince, the future Emperor, Fire Lord, ruler of the Black Legion, sorcerer—was only a man. And men could be broken.

“You’ll be with me then, my Vhalla, my lady, my love.”

In the darkness she didn’t have to be Serien or Vhalla. She could be no one, and that was the only thing that brought her peace enough to close her eyes.

Serien had been born of blood and death, but even she was beginning to see the sun rise in all its colors.

“I want you,” he uttered huskily. “Have me.”

“My Vhalla, my lady, my love.” His words smoothed away the rough edges of her heart. “You make me do things far more dangerous than dream. You make me hope, you make me want.” He sighed a sound that was part bliss and part pain. “Mother, I have yet to discover if you will be my salvation or my demise.”

With a step, the world she had always known ended.

She had watched the actions of men who wanted to break her as Vhalla, now as Serien, and saw them the same. Unfortunately for them, one couldn’t break what was already broken.

She would not meet these people in terror. If she was going to die, then she would die with dignity. Vhalla dashed backward and pulled off her gauntlets, feeling the wind beneath her fingers as they unlatched her plate. She would not die as Serien. If she was going to die, then she would die as the Windwalker.

He was like poetry through fire.