Flamefall (The Aurelian Cycle, #2)

by Rosaria Munda

This is the style of dress Lee has always looked most at home in. Like he could have stepped out of a tapestry of the old regime and into the new, ready to command in either one.

His fingers are hooked under the chain of the necklace, drawing it out, laying the pendant against the silk of the dress with strange reverence.

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

Lee reaches out to take both my hands in his. “Together,” he says, his voice shaking. “We do this together.” “Together,” I repeat.

Something warm and proud blooms in my chest. Our eyes meet and he lifts his glass, fractionally. Like he’s toasting me. We’ll do this together.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

I can read the poems, too. I’ve been learning. Let me share everything with you, as these lovers did.

“You are an idiot. You listened to Power? Why didn’t you come to me!”

Snow dusts her eyelids, her nose, her lips, and all I want to do is kiss them—but

These words, these thoughts, this precise mind I’ve missed even more than I missed the sight of her.

“We do this together,” he tells me. “Together,” I answer.

Her accent is as I remember it from years of classes I spent listening to her learn my mothertongue: utterly beautiful.

For this girl, I’m not the bitch commander. I’m Antigone sur Aela, Firstrider of Callipolis. I’m everything the Revolution promised.