Chapter Quotes (Heart of Flames)

There are 60 chapters in *Heart of Flames*, the book, plus an epilogue. Each has a chapter quote from Pheronia's perspective.

Chapter 1: *My dearest daughter, I want to tell you a story.*

Chapter 2: *There once was a girl born from a legacy of ash and fire. Except she had none of it. How cruel to have such ancestors, to have such a name, and yet possess no claim to any of it.*

Chapter 3: *Unwanted, they called her. Ordinary. Powerless. And she believed them, believed the lies they told her about herself.*

Chapter 4: *She was not measured based on her own merits or skills. She was forever standing behind her sister, and the brightest lights turn all else to darkness.*

Chapter 5: *But it was in that darkness that the girl found her own way in the world. To find her own strength. That girl, daughter, was me.*

Chapter 6: *When I was young, my sky had three suns: my mother, my father, and my sister. I thought I would bask forever in their warm glow, our lives together like fixed pointes in a never-changing universe. But it was not meant to be.*

Chapter 7: *Later, I realized my parents were more like falling stars, destined to light my world for only the briefest of moments. There and then gone again, my life colder after their passing. Except, of course, for my sister.*

Chapter 8: *We were not meant to orbit one another, or to pass in and out of each other's skies. We were always destined to collide, leaving heartbreak and desolation in our wake.*

Chapter 9: *Sometimes I think we were nothing more than two lost girls with the weight of an entire empire on our narrow shoulders. What might we have been if we'd been born in a different time . . . under different stars?*

Chapter 10: *But I am glad we have each other, my sister and me. Even at the very end, I was glad.*

Chapter 11: *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.*

Chapter 12: *My sister also taught me that there is more than one kind of ash. There are the ashes of destruction -- all that is left after a blaze -- and there are the ashes of rebirth. The ashes of a remade world . . . the fertile ground upon which new life grows.*

Chapter 13: *My sister taught me many things. Would for you, my daughter, to have a sister such as her. She would teach you life's hard lessons. Some on purpose. Some by accident. And some simply by virtue of who she is.*

 Chapter 14: *And make no mistake--in my life with Avalkyra Ashfire, I learned a great deal. If only some of those hard lessons could be unlearned. If only they were not necessary.*

 Chapter 15: *When our father died, I learned what it was to stand together.*

 Chapter 16: *When we faced our first battle during the Stellan Uprising, I learned that even when we were on the same side, we stood for opposing ideals. While Avalkyra was skilled at ripping bodies apart, I was skilled at putting them back together.*

 Chapter 17: *And when my mother was murdered and my sister was guilty, I learned what it was to stand alone.*

 Chapter 18: *Always I had been in her shadow, until the day she left for good and took the light with her. There were no suns left in my sky.*

Chapter 19: *But alone I finally understood what it was to be an Ashfire. I did not want to rule, but we do not always choose our destinies. Being an Ashfire was not a choice, but a responsibility.*

Chapter 20: *Avalkyra Ashfire wanted to rip mor than bodies apart... she wanted to tear the whole world asunder. And so it was up to me to piece it back together.*