A Light in the Flame (Flesh and Fire, #2)

by Jennifer L. Armentrout

“Sotoria didn’t belong to him then, and Seraphena doesn’t belong to him now.” Seraphena. I could count on one hand how many people called me by my full name, and none of them spoke it like he did. As if it were a prayer and a reckoning.

“What he means to say is that such a thing, a Primal of both Life and Death, is not meant to exist,” Nyktos said. “It would be unthinkable for the embers of both to thrive in one being. But if they could?” He gave a short laugh with a raise of his dark brows. “The kind of power they’d wield? It would be truly absolute. They could unravel realms in the same breath they created new ones.”

We all need someone to watch over us.” Heat crawled up my throat. “Do you?” “Desperately,” he whispered.

“I would have to be made of stone for my gaze not to stray.” A strand of reddish-brown hair fell against his cheek as his chin tipped down. “But I’m only flesh and blood, and you are…” “What am I?” “You are flesh and fire.” “Then you should be careful,” I taunted, “lest you become nothing more than ember and ash.”

“And what do you feel for me?” Nyktos was silent and then tipped his head back to look at me. Eather pulsed intensely behind his pupils. “I feel too many things. Curiosity and excitement that remind me of what I think yearning must feel like. Need. Want,” he said roughly, his voice low. “Amusement at times. Sometimes, even anger. But always awe. I am always in awe of you. I could keep going, but most of all, what I feel is the closest thing to peace I’ve ever experienced.”

Nektas’s words suddenly came back to me then. He is how you wish him to be. And I knew right then, as I stood there trembling, who he was to me. He wasn’t Nyktos. He never had been. He was Ash, and I… I was in love with him.

“I want to tell you that you look beautiful,” he said, his voice as soft as the shadows moving around us, warm against my cheek. “But beautiful doesn’t adequately capture what I see. I don’t know if there is a word that does. You have taken my breath with yours.”

“Rise for the One who is born of Blood and Ash, the Light and the Fire, and the Brightest Moon,”

“Even if you had your kardia, Ash, there was no guarantee you’d love me—” “Yes, there is.” His eyes were wide and wild as he caught my wrists. “I would’ve loved you if I could have. There would’ve been no stopping me.”

His eyes glinted with a…a sheen of red. Primal tears of grief. “I never wanted to love. Not until you, liessa.”

And the great powers will stumble and fall, some all at once, and they will fall through the fires into a void of nothing. Those left standing will tremble as they kneel, will weaken as they become small, as they become forgotten. For finally, the Primal rises, the giver of blood and the bringer of bone, the Primal of Blood and Ash.’”