More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
If I ever find the moron who wrote the first fundamental of magic, I swear I will throttle them until they die. Magic is nothing like a river. It’s a volcano: searing, explosive, and capable of obliterating everything in its destructive path.
She peers at me as though inspecting a bejeweled gnat—half disbelief, half curiosity.
No way am I getting caught in a love triangle with this beefcake.
Why has fate sent a volcano to teach these rivers how to flow?
“But I’m not really a goddess, Demetrios. I’m just an ordinary girl.” He scoffs, actually scoffs, derision upon his shadowed face. “Ordinary? You don’t come within two leagues of ‘ordinary.’ Lie down and rest, Anjeni.” I start to argue, but my name on his lips dismantles my senses.
Butting heads with Demetrios is more fun than I expected, and much too dangerous a game for me to play.
“I do not interfere in your leadership, Etricos,” I say, “but you will not use my power to subjugate others beneath your rule. A true leader earns loyalty; he does not take it by force.”
To my heart’s delight and my mind’s utter horror, he favors me with an intoxicating smile.
The sun hangs low in the western sky, almost kissing the spot on the distant horizon where sea meets land.
In the face of certain death, mere scraps of power become meaningless.” “They should be meaningless anyway.”
“What you want?” I say, hardly believing my ears. “What I want,” he confirms. “I want you to look at me, Anjeni. Not at Cosi, not at Moru of the Terasanai, not at your dozens of spark-bearers, and certainly not at a bowl of dumplings! Only at me!”
“Why would you want that?” He throws his hands up and paces the opposite direction. “Because you fascinate and confound me. Because in the same breath you’re both fragile and formidable. Because whether you admit it or not, you need someone to want you. Why should I not?” Half a dozen reasons bounce through my head, but none of them stick. I panic. “You don’t know what you’re saying.” “I’m asking for the fates to align,” he replies without missing a beat. My ears buzz, my thoughts clouded. I shake my head to clear it, but the muddle remains. Demetrios, meanwhile, approaches, his gaze intent as
...more
He withdraws his hands. My fingers feel suddenly cold.
One element stands in my favor, though: they are only riverbeds. I am a volcano.
Is this the same man who only an hour ago declared his feelings for me? This man has no feelings. He is terrifying, a conqueror, a merciless tyrant. If he had died, I would want to die as well.
Demetrios touches a thumb to my cheek, as though flipping away a piece of debris. “I’m expendable. You are not.” And then he actually smiles at the full-fledged scowl that darkens my expression. The lout. He delights in my worry for him, and even so I worry all the more.
“I’m not talking about the spark-bearers. You can rely on Cosi to plan attacks. You can rely on me to fight by your side. You don’t have to… to dash a hundred leagues away on your own and leave us all behind. You don’t have to hold yourself apart from everyone else. This is not your fight, Anjeni. It belongs to the Helenai, and to the tribes who have sought refuge here with us.”
“It is better to die as humans than to live as monsters,”
Exhausted, I close my eyes, indulging in his proximity and the sense of security it brings.
It’s as though I can pinpoint his presence even as he retreats from me. Everything and nothing. I drift to sleep on those words, a splinter of myself galloping through the shadowed rains alongside the man who claims he loves me.
like a familiar face in a crowd his presence beckons me.
that magnificent pretzel of logic.
I retreat behind my mental fortress, crushing my emotions back into the box I should have kept them in all along. I’m not sorry I let them out. Love unfulfilled is still love and I am a better person for it.
My heart is leagues away, with the company that rides out in the elements.
Kindness is a weapon of the very worst order. It drives its point into the soul.
What does it say about me, that he sees food as his greatest rival for my affection? We make a ridiculous pair.
my insides transform into a mass of twitter-pated goo.
Etricos becomes a national hero in honor of Tora, his lost beloved.
“At some point, Aitana will understand that there is no room at my side for anyone but Tora. Dima is her second choice. He deserves to be someone’s first.”
I never thought I would pity a mutant horse, but I do.
The fates have aligned, Anjeni.”
(How do I explain to a warrior from seven hundred years past that he needs to let someone stab him repeatedly with a series of needles? We’ll manage, somehow.)
“His name is Dima,” I say again, firmly. I squeeze his hand. “He is mine, and I am his.”
The only explanation that assuages my feelings is that those traditions—and I, and Demetrios, and all the people in this world—belong to a greater whole than I can comprehend. Everything and nothing converged.
Lastly, I give thanks to my Heavenly Father, who told me I could quit writing if I wanted to and then provided all the support I could possibly need to continue. This book in particular has been a huge learning opportunity. I’m so blessed to have had the difficult, slogging experience of writing it. Hard work is the best work. (Much as I sometimes wish otherwise.)
