Page 220 of Flame and Sparrow

Whatever happened now, I didn’t care, so long as I could face it with him at my side. He had started to heal parts of me that I didn’t even realize were broken, and now I would return to him, and together we could forge something new.

The fires around me became so intense I had to shut my eyes. I could still see the glow of them from behind my eyelids, and I drifted in the warmth and the muted brightness for several minutes, soaking it all in.

When I opened my eyes again, the Moraki were gone.

My body trembled with so much power that it took me a moment to remember to breathe, and then several more moments after that to remember how any other part of my body worked. My senses were as newly powerful as the rest of me, and I was so overwhelmed by the sudden onslaught of details that I couldn’t pick out any individual sights or sounds or smells at first.

After several deep breaths and lots of effort, I finally managed it, and I started to sort my surroundings into something I could make sense of.

I was standing on the first floor of the Tower of Ascension—a place I remembered as dark, even to my elvish vision—but now it appeared to be cast in the brightest daylight, all the ancient symbols upon its obsidian walls alight. I could have spent hours studying and taking notes on those symbols, had my eyes not been drawn to the figure standing by the front door.

Dravyn.

A soft gasp fell from my lips.

He turned to face me, and I saw him as I never had before. He was in his familiar, mortal-like form, yet all the edges of him seemed to glow. I felt as though my elven eyes had not been capable of seeing him for what he truly was—a being that was somehow even more breathtakingly beautiful than I remembered.

I managed a few steps toward him before I slowed, overwhelmed and in disbelief over what was happening.

He closed the rest of the distance between us with long, confident strides, reaching for my hand as he approached. I took it, and as our palms touched, a warmth unlike anything I’d ever felt flared in the depths of my very soul.

A warmth that felt like home.

“Hello, Wildfire,” he said with a smile.

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