Flamefall (The Aurelian Cycle, #2)

by Rosaria Munda

“The rider,” I tell her. “The one who brought the body, from Callipolis. You’d never believe it, Agga. She was Firstrider, like Julia. But she was a peasant, like us.” Agga gives a watery laugh of awed delight. “She told you?” “She looked Ixion in the eye and told him.”

And that’s why, when I think of Antigone sur Aela, facing Ixion down and smiling as she admitted her low birth, I know better than to follow the fantasy to its conclusion. To the buried dreams she evokes. I know what lies on the other side. Dreams are deadliest for the dreamers.

All of this, in a few words, like a delicate flower plucked from the earth and offered. For me to cradle in my hands or crush under my heel, as I choose.

Atreus, Dora, this regime or that, what do they matter in the face of such beauty, of Annie’s blush flooding freckled cheeks as she smiles up at me?

Learned that sometimes it was more important to watch someone else eat.

Revenge doesn’t need to begin with a knife. It can begin with a well-delivered speech.

How can someone be so beautiful, so brilliant, and so wrong?

I’ve never in my life felt such a clench of love for a stranger as I feel in this moment for this miracle of a girl.

The only atonement I can offer for my crimes, the only thanks I can give for her mercy. Let me answer her honor with honor, where they think we have none. The true gift of freedom is to act with this civility.

Even if we were never to kiss again, even if it were never more than this, it would be enough just to hold you.

Let a single urn contain our ashes, My comrade-in-arms, my friend, my beloved So that not even our bones lie apart from one another When you follow me from this world to the next.

I don’t need Power’s encouragement to be strong. I don’t need anyone’s encouragement to be strong. Strength isn’t the problem. It’s what you do with it.