Iron Flame

You’re going to love Violet. She’s smart and stubborn.
Reminds me a lot of you, actually.
You just have to remember when you meet her:
she’s not her mother.
—RECOVERED CORRESPONDENCE OF CADET LIAM MAIRI TO SLOANE MAIRI

“If Solas comes near you again, he knows I will devour his human whole and let him rot within me while his heart still beats, and then I’ll take the eye I so graciously left him.”

“I’m not fluent enough to make a good teacher, apparently.” Ridoc rolls his eyes.
“You’d teach me the sign for sex and tell me it was hello, just to see what happened when I used it,”

“I’ve never tasted gryphon—”

“We do not eat our allies,” Tairn lectures. “Find another snack.”

Aren’t you going to tell me how brilliant that idea was?”
Tairn scoffs. “I chose you last year for that brilliance, and now you’d like to be congratulated like it’s something new? How odd.”

“Imagine a man actually shortening a girl’s estimate,

“She makes a good point,” Andarna agrees. “Can you carry a luminary?”
“That question insults me.”
“Can you carry a luminary while insulted?” she prods.

Iron rain mean anything to you?” I ask down the bond, closing the notebook on Xaden’s desk and reaching for my pack. I’m going to be late if I don’t hurry.
“Should it?” Tairn replies.
“Clearly, or she wouldn’t be asking.” I can practically feel Andarna’s eyeroll. “Ooh… sheep.

And for the first time in my life, I feel weak. That’s what that monster did to me in this room. He took my strength.

You want to know something true? Something real? I love you. I’m in love with you. I have been since the night the snow fell in your hair and you kissed me for the first time. I’m grateful my life is tied to yours because it means I won’t have to face a day without you in it. My heart only beats as long as yours does, and when you die, I’ll meet Malek at your side. It’s a damned good thing that you love me, too, because you’re stuck with me in this life and every other that could possibly follow.”