Full Measures (Flight & Glory, #1)

by Rebecca Yarros

War was such a spiteful bitch; she took everything we loved and handed us back a folded flag in return, telling us the honor of their sacrifice was a just and equal payment. It wasn’t.

“The fire you have within you is impossible to kill. The first breath you take when you’re free of all this, it will come roaring back. That’s what is so

impossibly beautiful about you.”

“Because you needed me to. You’re so busy taking care of everyone else, you can’t see that someone needs to take care of you. So tell me what you need, and I’ll be that for you.”

“Gus has my number because I’m his coach. Now you have it because I’m your whatever.”

“My whatever?” The soft kiss he’d placed on my lips had me leaning in for more. “Whatever you need me to be,” he whispered against my mouth. He’d opened my door and brought my bag up the walk. “It’s not so easy to wash off,” he added, “and neither am I.”

“Grief, by its very nature, is designed to suck the life out of us because we are so willing to join our dead. It’s supposed to be this hard to figure out what to do next, but it’s that ‘next’ that makes us the living, and not our dead.”

“We’re taking it slow until you say so, because I can’t bear to hear a ‘no’ from you. But here’s your only warning: I’m going to chase the fuck out of you.”

I pulled it off the stack of abandoned binders and opened it. “Order of the Purple Heart, awarded to Specialist Joshua A. Walker for wounds sustained in combat in the Kandahar Province of Afghanistan.” Exactly where my father had been killed. Wrong place. Wrong time. Just like me at this very moment. I brought it all up into my arms and carried it into his room, leaving the uniforms on the bed and propping the award on top. He’d been the one wounded, but somehow I’d taken a fatal shot straight through my soul. The state championship picture mocked me from the wall, so I pulled it down and left it next to the award. I had been wrong. We hadn’t been fated since I’d been fifteen; we’d been doomed.

“Please fight for this, Ember. We are worth the fight. I love you, and that’s something I’ve never said to any girl. I love you more than hockey, or the air I breathe. You love me, too!”

“I love you enough for the both of us. I can’t regret anything that brought us together.”

“I should have given you the choice and told you, but I couldn’t. You are this miracle, something I never thought I was worthy of touching, let alone calling you mine. I’ve wanted you since I was eighteen, but I was never good enough, not for someone like you.”

“I love you. You are everything, and I’m not going to let you walk away over a uniform.”

“Just let me love you, December, because I can’t stop anyways. I’ve been at your mercy since I was eighteen.”

“That from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain.”

He raised his hand like he wanted to touch me, but lowered it slowly. “Your dad, he didn’t die in vain.” I pulled the loose piece of paper from my bag, folded it in half, and handed it to him. “What made you think it was meant for Dad? You’re the one resolved. What’s your full measure of devotion?” I walked away before I had to listen to his answer.

“Maybe love this exquisite, this powerful isn’t meant to last forever. Maybe we’re meant to burn so brightly for each other right now to light whatever path we’re heading down, but there’s no sustaining a fire like this.”