A Fire Endless (Elements of Cadence, #2)

by Rebecca Ross

A healer learning her grandmother’s craft, tending to sheep and her father’s kail yard, and believing her life was predictable, already written out before her, despite the fact that she was hungry for something else. Something that had led her here, to this moment.

“If I am weak for wanting you, then let me embrace that weakness and make it my strength,”

“And if you must haunt me, then let me haunt you in return.”

He was both lost and found within her,

He had never felt safer than he did in that moment, lying in her arms in the dark as the rain eased up beyond the windows.

“I was thinking about all the different paths our lives take, how little choices here and there suddenly guide us to places we never expected. How sometimes even the worst of experiences turn us into what we need to be, even though we would rather avoid the pain. But we grow stronger—we grow sharper—and before we truly even know it, we are looking back on it all. We see who we were and we see who we have become, and it is why the spirits watch us and marvel.”

Oh my god. The perfect thought to end the year on.

“I know I should be afraid. But I’m where I’m supposed to be. And I’d soon become miserable if I forfeited my fate in order to remain ‘safe.’”

This book is just out here speaking to me and shit <3

“The riddle goes as follows: 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.”

“You’re assuming Ash sent me here for the mission and the mission alone. But perhaps he knew that I need you, more than I need air and warmth and light. That if I were to go on living as I had been in the east without you, I would soon be worn down to nothing but dust.”

“You’re staring at me, Jack,” she whispered. He began to move across the bed toward her. “I can’t seem to draw my eyes away from you.” She smiled as he hovered over her, close enough that he could feel the heat from her skin but not quite touching. He traced her lips, watching them part beneath his thumb, her eyes drifting closed.

He kissed her softly, his mouth trailing to her jaw, her neck. He kissed the wild thrum of her pulse, the hollow of her throat. He ached when she sighed, when her fingers raked across his back. He found the edge of her chemise, easing it up as he slid down her body. “I’ve thought about this every night since you left me,” he whispered as he kissed her knees, the inner warmth of her thighs. She gasped when he tasted her. The sound went through him like lightning, and Jack savored the moment. It was simply him and her in the darkness. There was nothing else beyond the door and the walls; there was nothing else save for her and the fire she stirred in his blood and the ancient vows they had spoken beside a thistle patch beneath a stormy sky. The choice they had made to bind themselves together. There was nothing but the way she said his name, both a prayer and a plea, and he answered her without a single word. “Jack.” She tugged on his tunic until his mouth found hers again, his body covering hers. They came together. He looked at her as she looked at him, and he was completely consumed by her. In the way she moved and touched him. The rosy hint on her cheeks and the dark possession in her eyes. He buried his face in her hair. He breathed her in as he surrendered to her embrace. They lay like that for a while, entwined, Adaira caressing his shoulders. He was almost asleep when he heard her voice. Her whisper followed him into his dreams. “Old menace.”

And I would love nothing more than to bore you with mainland stories day after day and sing for you until your guilt sheds like old skin and you choose the life you want, not the one you think you deserve.”

“Because your heart is good and brave and kind,” Ella said. “You are thoughtful and smart. And those are the people who I want to be friends with. Not the ones who think they are above everyone else. Who scowl and judge things they don’t understand and throw mud and have cowardly hearts.”

Your words found me at my weakest, at my darkest hour. You reminded me to breathe—to inhale, to exhale. You reminded me of all the gleaming moments we shared, even if it had just been for a season. You reminded me of what could still be if I was brave enough to reach out and claim it. And I would tell you to sing up a hundred storms, if only to hear such beauty and truth again. To feel it settle in my bones and warm my blood. To know it is mine and mine alone to claim. I love you, more than these humble words and this everlasting ink can say. I love you, Jack. —A.

“You and I have faced many things alone,” Jack murmured. “Between the mainland and the isle, the east and the west, we’ve carried our troubles in solitude. As if it were weakness to share one’s burdens with another. But I am with you now. I am yours, and I want you to lay your burdens down on me, Adaira.”

She let them all go because he was her home, her shelter. Her endless fire, burning through the dark.

OH MY GOD! Im screaming! They're so perfect.

You were always meant to be here,

He marveled at how his own heart could exist outside his body. “You don’t know what you do to me,” he whispered. “By you alone I could be undone.”

He held her against the rock, her legs wrapped around his waist. He was completely lost in her, lost in what they were making together. They were reaching that edge, the place where they both melted, 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.

He could remain like this. He could remain tucked away from the world with her; she was his sustenance and his steel, sharpening him, sustaining him. She was everything he needed, and his music was pale in comparison to her.

His arm came around her, solid and possessive, and his hand delved into her hair, drawing her mouth to his. He had never kissed her like this before, like he needed something that dwelled deep within her. His kiss was hungry and desperate and fierce, and Sidra felt it curl all the way down to her toes. She could taste the loam in him—a wild, green sweetness—and she wondered where he had been. She wondered about the things he had seen, and how he had found his way home to her.

wasn’t sure when you’d return,” she confessed. “I know, and I’m sorry,” he said. “You have been so brave, Sidra. You have been so strong without me, holding the clan and the east together. Let me help you now, love. Let me carry it with you again.”

She was home with Torin. She may have been in the west, with sunlight streaming in through the window, but she was home in his arms. She had never felt safer, or more deeply known and loved as he whispered her name.

“And so you turned your fear into something else,” he said. “You reached the place you thought you would never find, and you claimed it as your own. Well done, my love.”

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.”

think that I want to make such music with you until my last day when the isle takes my bones. I think that you are the song I was longing for, waiting for. And I will always be thankful that you returned to me.”