Heart of Flames

She was the kind of person who led by example, and like a lantern in the darkness, she made you want to follow.

There was nothing a phoenix loved so much as heat.

This was why Veronyka had wanted to be a Phoenix rider in the first place: to protect, to save, to champion the weak and powerless.

Hold fast to your heart, my daughter. Blood can lead you astray, but your heart will always beat true,

My sister taught me there is more than one kind of fire. There is the fire that consumes, and there is the fire that illuminates.

Someday soon you’ll call me Queen.

A phoenix is safe inside its shell, resting in a bed of flame and ash. But that is not what firebirds are for. Rise, child of Axura, and spread your wings.

He could see the Ashfire in her as she soared through the air, the legacy of queens going back centuries. The bravery of Nefyra. The strength of Lyra. The leadership of Elysia. And if history had taught him anything, you did not cross an Ashfire queen.

If you don't eventually bend, Val, you'll break.

They are day and night and scattered light; sun and moon and distant stars. They are life and death and what is left; all and nothing and everything in between.

If I am to become naught but ruin, may it be so that you can build anew upon the ashes.

Either the commander was keeping Sev in the dark, or there was more than one band of Phoenix Riders in existence, and those riders might just be fighting for the wrong side.

She squeezed her eyes shut and stopped resisting. She fell into his arms, where he held her gently for a heartbeat then sighed. She thought of Val again. For all her dragging and pulling and demanding, all their ways their bodies had come into contact—and conflict—with each other over the years, Val had never given herself to Veronyka like this. Never offered herself at all. With Val, everything was take, take, take.

She didn’t want to be a queen. She didn’t want a war. She wanted peace. She wanted to protect others like her, to make the world safe for animages again. Veronyka wanted to fly in a flock, to be part of the Phoenix Rider resurgence, to stand among her fellows with pride and confidence, not above them.

How did Val know? How did she always know the way to Veronyka’s heart—and why did she always do damage when she got there?

I thought I had failed and I was ready to give up hope. But then there was you.

You cannot flee from something that is a part of you.

Family was more than blood; family was the people you chose.

Sometimes he wished he experienced the world as simply as she did. It wasn't that Sparrow herself was simple, but rather, she lived and spoke and acted in the most uncomplicated of ways. She understood things about anger and grief and forgiveness that Elliot had not - at least, not until she'd helped him see it - but she didn't let the dark complexities of the world overwhelm or shake her convictions.

Intentions didn't matter when you did the wrong thing.

A secret in the wrong hands is as good as a blade in the back.

Home isn't a building," he said as soon as their eyes met. "Home is . . ." He cast about as if searching for words. "It's like a bond. It's a place you feel safe; it's the people who make it that way.

Maybe it was her tone - deliberate and without pretence - or maybe it was the fact that she had remembered him not as the person who had done bad things, but instead, as the person who'd had bad things done to him.

How many times could a person hurt you and your love for them endure? Then again, surely only love could make words like hers cut so deeply? Love didn't stop people from hurting each other-- love made it easier.

These are the costs of war: a thousand shattering moments of pain and loss and a lifetime of regret.

Sev took a step closer to Kade. How could he not see that Sev wanted nothing to do with the servant and everything to do with him?

When Hestia fount our Sev didn’t have a “sweetheart,” she took it upon herself to send very pretty serving girls instead of assistants to his room ... Hestia hadn’t known Sev had no interest in blushing maidens but she was no fool—before long she was sending handsome serving boys instead.

But what he did know was that sadness hit them particularly hard, especially sadness as it related to death. It made sense: phoenixes we’re immortal if not slain and could resurrect if they chose. For them, death was a distant, unknowable thing, and when they did encounter it . . . they did not bounce back as easily.

Val was still her family—and would have been regardless of what that birth certificate said—but now Veronyka was an Ashfire. A royal line. Descended from queens.