Iron Flame

“Who the fuck’s flight jacket are you wearing?”

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.”

Last year, you learned how to ride the dragons who chose you. This year, you’ll learn what to do if you fall off. Welcome to Rider Survival Course

“Secrets make for poor leverage. They die with the people who keep them.”

“Confidence is not arrogance. I don’t lose the fights I pick. And we’re both allowed to have boundaries. You’re not the only one who gets to set the rules in this relationship.”

She made her choice, and it wasn’t you. It will never be you. I know it. She knows it. The whole quadrant knows it.

Full. Disclosure,” I demand like any rational woman staring down the man who kept her brother’s life a secret from her, let alone an entire war. “I can forgive you for keeping me in the dark before today. You did it to save lives, possibly even mine. But it’s complete and total honesty from now on, or…” Gods, am I going to have to say it?

But when the lives of everyone around you depend on how well you can lie, it’s not easy to realize it’s the truth that will save you.

Turns out, falling in love with someone only brings that blissful high all the poets talk about if they love you back. And if they keep secrets that jeopardize everyone and everything you hold dear? Love doesn’t even have the decency to die. It just transforms into abject misery. That’s what this ache in my chest is: misery.