Flamefall (The Aurelian Cycle, #2)

by Rosaria Munda

And all of it, all that suffering, embodied in this scrawny girl, this mess of brown hair and freckles, this serf— Who has asked and asked and asked of me until she has left me with nothing and still expects me to come back to her.

Nooo lee stop

As if he finds my fury beautiful.

cloud. So suddenly, so completely, that I can’t imagine it ever having been. 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?

so sweeeeeet

Guess that I should let it spill over, just a little, into Pallor, the feelings of muddled happiness at the sight of Annie, the instinct that feels a little wrong but she never need know—of protectiveness, of possessiveness, at the sight of her standing at my dragon’s side like this. So that he knows the loyalty he feels to me should encompass her.

Never mind that Atreus betrayed me and wants me dead. His regime is failing, just as the last did. Feasting during a famine, warm inside while outside the city hungers. He deserves to fall.

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

And then I hear something that cuts short all my joy of the fight. Gareson is sobbing. It’s muffled in his helmet, barely discernible above the wind and the roars of the dragons around us. I hear myself say his name.

“No one knows. The dragonborn assumed they go north to die.”