Fireborne (The Aurelian Cycle, #1)

by Rosaria Munda

that the life I have begun to think of as routine is, in fact, extraordinary.

I let out the breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding.

Its definitely a YA book

She thinks she can handle a blazesite? Fine. But she shouldn’t expect me to wait on her pride when Callipolan lives are at stake. I have more to worry about than her need to prove herself— In fact, I have family to worry about. Only in the air does that reality finally hit.

And now that boy, whose face I’ve seen fill with longing at the sight of our enemy, has ordered me to wait behind while he goes out to face them. He’s right. We probably will be too late. And it would have gutted me to see it. But that doesn’t undo the absurdity of the fact that, under threat by dragonfire from people whom Lee counts as family, he just questioned my fitness to face them. How often have I longed for this boy’s comfort? How often have I remembered and missed how much easier it was, in Albans, when I could still seek it from him? But now I know what that feels like, delivered unsolicited and unneeded. Because it’s one thing to be written off by Goran, by the Minister of Propaganda, by every single teacher I’ve ever had or ministry official I’ve ever done rounds with. It’s another thing entirely to be written off by Lee.

You see, Annie, they watch us kneel, they see the back of our heads, and they think we’ve given in. They don’t realize you can think from your knees just as well as from your feet.

“I watched my family get taken by dragonfire at the age of six, and I learned to ride anyway.” Power’s brown eyes are raking over my face. The same way they’ve always done when he asks me about stormscourge fire. But today, I experience it as something besides cruelty. Admiration. “Damn right you did,” he murmurs.

It takes me a gasping moment to emerge from the delirium, to rein him back and tell him to hold fire. But the damage is already done. Pallor’s aim was true, and Annie sur Aela, surging toward us, was within range. Fire has blanketed them.

Rematch, I tell myself. I’m clinging to the idea desperately; because the alternative, that this is how it has happened, that these were the terms on which I won, is too nightmarish. They’ll give us a rematch, they’ll have to.

You stupid, fearless flyboy.

“Did you know,” Hane says, before the meeting starts, “that the title Alterna bears a feminine ending for the first time since our earliest poetry, because of you?” Alterna is a Dragontongue loanword, and Dragontongue, unlike Callish, is a gendered language. Even though I did know it, I also appreciate Hane’s bit of trivia, delivered softly and with a smile, for what it is: something between congratulations and condolence.

“The First Protector requested that we ensure maximum survival rate for Class Gold,” the physician tells me. He looks embarrassed, but determined nonetheless, like this is one part of the plan he backs wholeheartedly. “They are, after all, the nation’s most valuable citizens.” Annie speaks up, her voice quiet. “Surely they don’t need full rations. Their work isn’t usually physical, is it?” The physician stares at her, like he doesn’t quite believe a second underage person is volunteering out of turn. “Well, that varies by individual, but—” “Lo Teiran does not need a full stomach to write poetry,” I point out.

I look around the room, at the stony faces of people who have taken it upon themselves to decide who deserves to live and die. Rock’s voice echoes in my head: I feel like a Stormscourge. I can’t shake the suspicion that he’s right. We’re coercing food out of farmers with the same threats of dragonfire. We’re about to endure another famine in which most of the people who die will be very poor. We’ll lie about it, just as the dragonlords did. After that, are there differences? Do the justifications for our choices matter to those who starve? For years I’ve told myself, if not always that the old regime was in the wrong, at least that Atreus is in the right. That his system is fair and good, that he has a plan worth following. Wasn’t that the point? Just as Atreus once told us: You only deserve this mantle as long as you can be more reasonable and more virtuous than what came before. I realize I’m no longer sure we are.

“Lee, what’s wrong?” Crissa says, her hand still on the handle of the opened door. He stares at her for a moment, like he can’t even remember who she is, and then he croaks, “Annie. Annie, I need to speak to you.” I get to my feet. Crissa looks from him to me and says, simply and with dignity, “Of course.” He seems vaguely consternated as she leaves us, as though he hadn’t meant his last demand to come out as a request for her to leave so much as a summons for me. But he’s too distracted to bother correcting it, so he allows Crissa to sweep past him and then he steps into the room. Crissa closes the door behind her.

“As much as I’ve hated doing collections these past two weeks,” Annie goes on doggedly, “as much as I felt like a Stormscourge—I also know it was nothing close to the worst of what they did. And so long as that’s the case, this is the side you want to be on. Even if we’re a little evil, we’re still better than the evil they were, before.” The lesser of two evils. It’s a far cry from what I hoped we’d be. And a far cry from what Annie once hoped for, as well.

“Take the boy into the hallway,” Atreus murmured, “and slit his throat.”

Holy shit! Atreus didn't spare Lee's life, a random soldier did 😱

“Annie,” Rock says, his voice rising, “you understand what happens if he doesn’t do it, right? You understand who will have to deal with him if he changes sides? You.” I answer with rising anger. “Yeah, that’s occurred to me, Rock.” “And you’ll be able to do that?” Rock demands. It is like a confession, to say it aloud after hours of pondering in silence. “Yes.”

Then we’re no longer gentle, and I no longer care that I don’t know what I’m doing, because I know. My lips taste the first warmth of his tongue, my hands take in his chest and shoulders and neck as if they must make up time for all the years we haven’t touched, and I marvel at the feel of his hands, Lee’s hands, holding me so tight to him it’s like he wills our bodies to crush together as one. The strength that I have seen in wire-toned muscles now folded around me, their power on my body heady as wine. I step forward, pushing him back, so that when he backs into the cot, he sinks down onto it. For a moment we continue to kiss as I stand between his knees and gather courage. But it’s too late to hesitate, too late now for shame, and so I do the one thing left I want to do. I climb onto his lap, fold my knees around him, and wind my arms around his neck to kiss him between drawn breaths. An echo of how we sat in Albans, when he used to hold me. But this time, it’s I who am holding him.

❤

It’s with a pain that feels strangely distant from myself that I notice Crissa has taken his hand. The kiss he and I shared in a darkened cell feels like it already belongs to the lives of former selves, burned away in the fire. What’s left beneath, still raw, doesn’t know what claim to place on this boy, whom I’ve just sent to hell and back. But then Lee looks past them, as their conversation continues. His gray eyes soften at the sight of me, and the beginning of a line appears at the side of his mouth, like something just a little sadder than a smile, and I know the words without their needing to be said. Our claim on each other is the same as it’s always been. The fires we walked through today were ones we’ve trained to walk since childhood. And today, the choices that began in childhood made us strong enough to defy two regimes, in the name of revolution. Together we’ll defy them, step by step through this fire, to the end.