A Fire Endless (Elements of Cadence, #2)

by Rebecca Ross

He couldn’t help but dredge up the familiar, icy resentment toward his mother. His own flesh and blood who had abandoned him without a backward glance when he was a boy.

The landscape reminded Adaira of a dream, or a lament. It was both familiar and new, and she found it difficult to draw her eyes away from it.

Eventually, he would want to leave. He would leave her, as all the people she loved inevitably did.

How sometimes even the worst of experiences turn us into what we need to be,

Ice and fire, brought together as one. Sisters divided, united once more. Washed with salt and laden with blood—all united will satisfy the debt you owe.”

It wouldn’t surprise me, as if the isle is longing to be united once more.”

The hierarchy had been made by Iagan’s music.

He let his mind dig a trench for his thoughts to pace, around and around.

Iagan had never died. He had sung his way to power and immortality, stealing fragments from the folk to do it. He had become Bane.

“I remember staring up into the darkness and feeling the stone walls close around me. I remember trying to envision my life and what I wanted to become and being unable to picture it. But perhaps that feeling came from my subconscious sensing that my time on the mainland was nearly gone, that I would soon depart from that life and those plans, even if that felt impossible and overwhelming at the time.”

When the superfluous at last fades away, leaving behind nothing but salt and bones and blood and breath, the only elements that matter.

and he knew that she was the only one he wanted to find in the darkness. The only one he wanted to hold the shape of his soul, even with his thorns and dreams and wounds.

“Half of me and half of you,” Sidra insisted. “Until they become their own person.”

Jack knew he had made the right decision; one of their own should rule amongst them, not another bard.

Not even when he was King of Fire.

“Months ago, I told you that I was a verse inspired by your chorus. I thought I knew what those words meant then, but now I fully understand the depth and the breadth of them. I want to write a ballad with you, not in notes but in our choices, in the simplicity and routine of our life together. In waking up at your side every sunrise and falling asleep entwined with you every sunset. In kneeling beside you in the kail yard and leading a clan and overseeing trade and eating at our parents’ tables. In making mistakes, because I know that I’ll make them, and then restitution, because I’m better than I once ever hoped to be when I’m with you.”