Flamefall (The Aurelian Cycle, #2)

by Rosaria Munda

Power’s face is suddenly glowing in the light of the fire she bellows upward. His eyes flick behind me, to her fire, then back at my face. There is something shining in his eyes as he looks at me now, like he’s taking me in, a look I remember from the days—they seem long ago now—when we trained together. As if he finds my fury beautiful.

There is something violent, almost ugly, in the satisfying of a craving you’ve buried so deep in yourself you forgot it was there.

I’ve spent years making myself not notice how she looks in a flamesuit—also black, also form-fitting—but this gown asks to be looked at, to show her as a woman, and for the brief glance I let myself take of her hips tapering to waist, of the nubs of her collarbones peeking beneath a high neckline. I remember the miracle of it, that this vision of a girl once stood on tiptoe to fit her lips to mine, that when she felt my hands on her waist, she only kissed me harder.

I feel the blackness part from my mind like a breaking 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?

In another life, my father would have taught me how to do this, but he’s not here and so I have to guess. 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.

Annie on Pallor’s back. Black satin perched on silver scales, flaming hair in the dark, the halo of her face turned toward mine, trusting. My parents were always in high spirits on occasions when she joined him on Aletheia, but only now do I understand the tenderness of the moment. How looking up at them, together, I feel I’m looking at something perfect.

Where I learned to hate hunger but to hate the sight of her hunger, more. Learned that sometimes it was more important to watch someone else eat. The best parts of myself, I found with Annie.

Once, years ago, we walked hand in hand through a door. Into a Choosing Ceremony that I did not think I wanted, into a room where Aela found me, and Pallor found Lee, and our new lives began. Tonight, we walk hand in hand through a doorway again.

I can feel Delo’s closeness working on me like its own drug, and it turns out that if Julia was wine, Delo’s whiskey. A proof I can’t handle.

And in that instant I want to tear Antigone sur Aela apart. For her mercy. For her discretion. For being everything the fools of my village hoped she would be and it mattering not at all.

Antigone sur Aela freezes. I can see the understanding course through her, through her dragon. 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.

I think of the way my skin thrummed when he touched my chin with the tips of his fingers, when we looked at each other. I’ve held a dragonborn’s gaze like that before, but never—never once, with Julia—did I feel so strongly that we saw each other.

We fight for lords who lock our children in burning strongholds while the enemy spares our thatched roofs. I’m done playing for New Pythos. It’s time I play for someone else. Antigone.

Let the Firstrider take me or not. She returned a body to us and I will return these remains, pitiful as they are, to her. 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.

Amid everything that has happened, dragonfire and families and friends facing death, Griff Gareson wishes he could read. Of all the ways I’ve felt my heart be broken today, this was not one I expected. They gave you a dragon, I think, but they wouldn’t give you this.

“You’re here,” she says. Like she wants me to be. “I’m here.” She curls closer, and I think: Even if we were never to kiss again, even if it were never more than this, it would be enough just to hold you.

I think of how Duck once led me to this bed when I was high with insomnia, tucked me in, and told me a bedtime story. Not caring that I couldn’t love him as he loved me, because he loved me more than that.

There was only her. Auburn hair soft as down. A slender neck rippled with burn scars I knew by heart, freckles dusting pale cheeks that I kissed. Her eyes closed, her lips parting, her neck baring as she arched it back against the pillow and I thought, Let this moment, let this sight, never end.

Logs on a fire. Fires to burn the world down. A lifetime in the ashes of such a fire has taught me that it doesn’t end there. Anyone can start a fire. The problem is what happens after.

Guardians make good scapegoats, but scapegoats make poor solutions.

Delo makes a noise of disgust. As I fill his cup, his eyes flick upward, lightning fast, to mine, then return to the conversation. I feel a pulse begin in my ears that has nothing to do with the subject they’re discussing. The last time we were so close, I was on my knees before him, and his trembling fingers touched my chin.

“You’ve never asked anything of me. You give, but you don’t expect in return.”

“Griff, I don’t . . . I never wanted it to be like that.” His eyes are so close, close as Julia’s used to be. Except his are so dark they’re almost black. “It wouldn’t,” I tell him. Our voices are soft, barely a whisper, as I lift my fingers to trace the back of his neck, to snag the curls at the nape. “Why wouldn’t it?” he asks. “Because I want it.”

There is one dragon in the fleet I know would never hurt me, whose lord would never order it, and for them I would very well be both a coward and a fool. Already was a fool, tonight, a happy, lovestruck fool kissing him in the darkness. How could I ever do such a thing to Gephyra, to Delo?

The funny thing about overhearing a betrayal is that it makes your own impulse to come clean evaporate.

The old trick feels like a forgotten friend. Grief feels like a forgotten friend. A friend that visits me and smothers me at night.

With so many other sources of pressure, it’s become a relief to have a partner in on the secrets I’m keeping. As to what Power gets out of it, I’m not sure, since he looks as exhausted as I feel but never complains. He’s adapted to our new dynamic with unfailing irony.

Above us, on the perch, Eater attempts to make more room for himself. There’s a scuffle of wings and a squawk, and Aela kicks him off. Power scowls up at them; I realize I’m smiling. Just a little. Good girl.

This Lee, I loved. This Lee who was able to love me. Even after a childhood raised on the belief that I wasn’t the kind of being worthy of it.

This is when I butt up against the limitations of Power as a confidant. Because where Lee’s idealism is exhausting, Power’s eager pragmatism alarms me. Like it’s a glimpse of the road I’m going down and I don’t like where it leads.

But the rest of it is entirely different. The way, with Delo, I want it so badly that even in the moment I want more. The way, in so many small things, he gives where Julia only took. I feel as though, with every touch and kiss and breath, I am relearning something I’ve learned wrong.

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.

He begins to read aloud the section I was just so careful to read silently to myself. Listening to him, I feel a kind of pressure on my heart—as if suddenly, there is not space to contain it. His voice catches, uneven, on the word beloved.

For all the ways I don’t fit such a story, Delo’s still looking at me. His voice still caught on the word beloved. He still read it in the middle of a night he’s spent with me. The words are on the tip of my tongue: I can read the poems, too. I’ve been learning. Let me share everything with you, as these lovers did.

“We’ve been waiting on this one for years, brother.” He lifts a mug of tea as if in toast and bows with a flourish. “Heartfelt congratulations to you both.” “Out,” says Delo. Phemi seizes Ethelo’s arm. “Oh, we’re leaving. We’re leaving you to it—”

I could deny it. For a half breath, I think to. But truth is so precious, so rare, I want to cradle it like he cradles me.

That smile, I think, it could break a thousand hearts if the dragonlords could only see it.

Power, surrounded by his usual bevy of Gold girls. When he looks up at me, he doesn’t look away for a long moment, and even after he does, I feel the touch of his eyes lingering as heat on my skin.

Power takes the memo from me with uncharacteristic gentleness. “Before that,” he says, “you’re coming to my house for Midwinter.”

“You make him soft.” “I—what?” But my hammering heart tells me what. “Soft like his mother. Too soft a heart. Weak—” “He’s not weak.”

“Why are you so determined to make this city burn?” Megara leans forward. “Why are you so determined to preserve it?”

Until I face Ixion today, I’ve never known what it is to hate someone with such a rage that I wish they could be wiped from the face of the earth. To wish they were incinerated.

“But keeping power is so much more difficult than gaining it. You have to make sacrifices. You keep sacrificing until you realize the thing you’ve sacrificed is yourself.”

The metals test wasn’t an answer to the dragonlord’s dehumanization of us. It’s just another form of it. And I’ve been in denial because it was a system that benefited me. I’m done being complicit.

“Stop doing what it takes. Start asking yourself what’s needed.” She points to the window, and I turn. A strip of sky is visible, blue in the wake of the sunset, with a single fresh column of smoke rising thick and fast from the other side of the Firemouth. The First Protector’s house has been set on fire. “Starting with that,” Hane says.

“I will take this city from you,” I tell the man on the dirt at my feet, “but not as a usurper nor as an avenging heir.” The sky is open, and though I still stand on the ground, I feel I’m already on a dragon’s back. “I will take it out from under you as you name me your successor from your knees because your people want it and your head. Then I will let death be a mercy to you, just as it was for my father.”

“This is preposterous. First Lee sur Pallor, now you? Your job is to follow orders. I’ll grant that’s never been your strong suit—” “My job is to think. My job is to guide this city to justice. Sir.”

“It is unfortunately common that victims of violence later show a proclivity toward violence themselves.

All of this for nothing. The insults, the violence, the hunger. I’ve stood between this city and its rulers waiting for the compromise, but it will come to a bloody end no matter what I do because of the hubris of a handful of men.

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