Keeper Of The Flame Quotes

As we curve around into the loop of the City Circle, I can see that a couple of other stylists have tried to steal Cinna and Portia's idea of illuminating their tributes. The electric-light-studded outfits from District 3, where they make electronics, at least make sense. But what are the livestock keepers from Distric 10, who are dressed as cows, doing with flaming belts? Broiling themselves? Pathetic.

When along the pavement, Palpitating flames of life, People flicker around me, I forget my bereavement, The gap in the great constellation, The place where a star used to be

Libraries are like houses of worship: Whether or not you use them yourself, it's important to know that they are there. In many ways they define a society and the values of that society. Librarians to me are the keepers of the flame of knowledge. When I was growing up, the librarian in my local library looked like a meek little old lady, but after you spent some time with her, you realized she was Athena with a sword, a wise and wonderful repository of wisdom.

Had he not been the keeper of the flame, of anguish, trapped under the brilliance of what she had been to him? He had been a man of permanence, how could he have swayed to emotion like this?

everblaze: the unstoppable flame

When I observe Gram, I see how fragile the notion of tradition can be. If I take my eyes off the way she kneads her Easter bread, or if I fail to study the way she sews a seam in suede, or if I lose the mental image I have of her when she negotiates a better deal with a button salesman, somehow, the very essence of her will be lost. When she goes, the responsibility for carrying on will fall to me. My mother says I’m the keeper of the flame, because I work here, and because I choose to live here. A flame is a very fragile thing, too, and there are times when I wonder if I’m the on who can keep it going.

What I was still out of it, I heard your voice in my head- I think it’s why I woke up.” Her face tried its best to burst into flames. “Sorry, I-“ “Don’t be,” he interrupted. “I’m glad I’m awake.” “So am I,” she admitted. “But... you have to be super careful, okay?” “I will if you will,” he made her promise. He waited for her to meet his eyes, and when she did, he gave her the sweetest smile she’d ever seen. “By the way,” he murmured, pressing Mr. Snuggles against his heart. “I missed you too.

You are the keeper of my eternal secrets.

Bound in a hollow of space and time, only those truly in need, without harm in their hearts, could find their way to its sanctuary.

A fire will burn itself out, unless you open a window and give it fuel.. And when flames are licking at your heels you've got to break a wall or two if you want to escape.

I am from the Kilburn branch of the Keepers of the Eternal and Victorious Islamic Nation," said Hifan proudly. Irie inhaled. Keepers of the Eternal and Victorious Islamic Nation," repeated Millat, impressed. "That's a wicked name. It's got a wicked kung-fu arse sound to it." Irie frowned. "KEVIN?" We are aware," said Hifan solemnly, pointing to the spot underneath the cupped flame where the initials were minutely embroidered, "that we have an acronym problem.

while I’m not the one who cast the first sparks, I am willing to help keep the flames alive.

Helena dreamed about the keepers of the fire. The poorest old women had stored it away in suburban kitchens and had only to blow very gently on their palms to rekindle the flame

This book is dedicated to all librarians everywhere—for they are the true keepers of the secret flame and not to be trifled with.

At the Rodgers that night, the president all but anointed Hamilton as the keeper of the flame. His "primary message," he said, was to remind people of the need to keep hoping and to work together, but "this performance undoubtedly described it better than I ever could." The most important affinity that Hamilton will carry into its future isn't a specific message, though, political or otherwise: It's an underlying belief in stories, and their power to change the world. Good community organizer that he is, the president knows that stories can be an engine for empathy, and a way to show people what they share. It's why he introduced himself, in that first big speech in 2004, by telling his own story. In the years to come, some of the many, many kids who are going to see and even perform Hamilton will be newly inspired to tell their stories too. Every time they do, the newly kaleidoscopic America will understand itself a little more. "I can do that," they'll say. And if they're like Alexander Hamilton, they'll add, "And I can do it better.

Well, lucky you, you've landed in the right nest. Come, come, follow me, young hatchling." -Keeper of the chronicles (Alister)

I’m sure I can figure it out. Just because I don’t have fancy powers doesn’t mean I’m useless.” “Oh, I like her,” Livvy called through the flames. “Tell you what, Feisty Girl

Humanity will be better served when those in power, privileged and keepers of it's flame realize that poverty is not a crime nor a curse but a condition though at times crippling can be the catalyst that can lead many from despair to prosperity. Each time we help feed the hungry we not only help satisfy their needs but  also ours. When we help shelter the homeless, we also strengthen the foundations of our souls in the process. When we show others love and compassion...it will always come back to us. In all we do to help better humanity...it is never done in vain.

The goodness inside you is like a small flame, and you are its keeper. It’s your job, today and every day, to make sure that it has enough fuel, that it doesn’t get obstructed or snuffed out.

He’s a trickster, a secret-keeper. He’s the dark side of the moon. He’s my beautiful, terrible mystery. My friend. My soulmate. From flame to ashes, dawn to dusk—until darkness dies. He’s mine, and I’m his, always.

To My Priestess Sisters To my priestess sisters: the keepers of mysteries, the medicine women, the story keepers and story tellers, the holy magicians, the wild warriors, the original ones, the ones who carry the ancients within the marrow of your bones, the ones forged in the fires, the ones who have bathed in thier own blood, the heroines who wear thier scars as stars, the ones who give birth to their visions and dreams, the ones who weep and howl upon the holy altars, the avatars, the mothers, maidens and crones, the mystics, the oracles, the artists, the musicians, the virgins, the sensual and sexual, the women of our world- I honor you. I stand for you and with you. I celebrate both your autonomy and our sisterhood of One. We are many. We are fierce. We are tender. We are the change agents and we are radically holding and clearing space for the bursting forth of the holy seeds of the collective conscience and consciousness. We are manifestors and flames of purification and transformation. We are living our lives in authenticity, vulnerability, transparency and unapologetically. We are committed to integrity, impeccability, accountability, responsibility and passionate love. We are here on purpose, with purpose and give no energy to conformity, acceptance or approval. We are the daughters of the earth and the courageous of the cosmos. Priestess, keep living your life passionately, raising the cosmic vibrations and lowering your standards for no one. You are brazenly blessed and a force of nature. Nurture yourself and one another. You are a crystalline bridge between realms and uniting heaven and earth. You are a priestess and you are divinely anointed, appointed and unstoppable.

The goodness inside you is like a small flame, and you are its keeper. It’s your job, today and every day, to make sure that it has enough fuel, that it doesn’t get obstructed or snuffed out. Every person has their own version of the flame and is responsible for it, just as you are. If they all fail, the world will be much darker—that is something you don’t control. But so long as your flame flickers, there will be some light in the world.

The goodness inside you is like a small flame, and you are its keeper. It's your job, today and every day, to make sure that it has enough fuel...every person has their own version of the flame...so long as your flame flickers, there will be some light in the world.

You’re feeling the flames, Ezra, but that’s part of the process. This pot I just made won’t be useful for anything until it goes through that fire.” He pointed to the kiln, where waves of heat shimmered above it. “The pots baking in there right now would be useless if they didn’t endure the heat.

The earliest storytellers were magi, seers, bards, griots, shamans. They were, it would seem, as old as time, and as terrifying to gaze upon as the mysteries with which they wrestled. They wrestled with mysteries and transformed them into myths which coded the world and helped the community to live through one more darkness, with eyes wide open and hearts set alight. "I can see them now, the old masters. I can see them standing on the other side of the flames, speaking in the voices of lions, or thunder, or monsters, or heroes, heroines, or the earth, or fire itself -- for they had to contain all voices within them, had to be all things and nothing. They had to have the ability to become lightning, to become a future homeland, to be the dreaded guide to the fabled land where the community will settle and fructify. They had to be able to fight in advance all the demons they would encounter, and summon up all the courage needed on the way, to prophesy about all the requisite qualities that would ensure their arrival at the dreamt-of land. "The old masters had to be able to tell stories that would make sleep possible on those inhuman nights, stories that would counter terror with enchantment, or with a greater terror. I can see them, beyond the flames, telling of a hero's battle with a fabulous beast -- the beast that is in the hero." "The storyteller's art changed through the ages. From battling dread in word and incantations before their people did in reality, they became the repositories of the people's wisdom and follies. Often, conscripted by kings, they became the memory of a people's origins, and carried with them the long line of ancestries and lineages. Most important of all, they were the living libraries, the keepers of legends and lore. They knew the causes and mutations of things, the herbs, trees, plants, cures for diseases, causes for wars, causes of victory, the ways in which victory often precipitates defeat, or defeat victory, the lineages of gods, the rites humans have to perform to the gods. They knew of follies and restitutions, were advocates of new and old ways of being, were custodians of culture, recorders of change." "These old storytellers were the true magicians. They were humanity's truest friends and most reliable guides. Their role was both simple and demanding. They had to go down deep into the seeds of time, into the dreams of their people, into the unconscious, into the uncharted fears, and bring shapes and moods back up into the light. They had to battle with monsters before they told us about them. They had to see clearly." "They risked their sanity and their consciousness in the service of dreaming better futures. They risked madness, or being unmoored in the wild realms of the interspaces, or being devoured by the unexpected demons of the communal imagination." "And I think that now, in our age, in the mid-ocean of our days, with certainties collapsing around us, and with no beliefs by which to steer our way through the dark descending nights ahead -- I think that now we need those fictional old bards and fearless storytellers, those seers. We need their magic, their courage, their love, and their fire more than ever before. It is precisely in a fractured, broken age that we need mystery and a reawoken sense of wonder. We need them to be whole again.

Exactly,” Sophie agreed. “I mean, we broke into Exile. How hard could it be?” The flames over Marella’s hands cooled back to blue, and her lips pulled into a smile. “You guys should see the looks on your bodyguards’ faces right now. It’s like a contest to see who can give the evilest glare—though your guard doesn’t really look surprised, Biana.” “I’m sure he isn’t,” Biana said, smiling over her shoulder at poor Woltzer.

I have always found it difficult not to be moved by Jerusalem, even when I hated it—and God knows I have hated it for the sheer human cost of it. But the sight of it, from afar or inside the labyrinth of its walls, softens me. Every inch of it holds the confidence of ancient civilizations, their deaths and their birthmarks pressed deep into the city's viscera and onto the rubble of its edges. The deified and the condemned have set their footprints in its sand. It has been conqured, razed and, rebuilt so many times that its stones seem to possess life, bestowed by the audit trail of prayer and blood. Yet somehow, it exhales humility. It sparks an inherent sense of familiary in me—that doubtless, irrefutable Palestinian certainty that I belong to this land. It possesses me, no matter who conquers it, because its soil is the keeper of my roots, of the bones of my ancestors. Because it knows the private lust that flamed the beds of all my foremothers. Because I am the natural seed of its passionate, tempestuous past. I am a daughter of the land, and Jerusalem reassures me of this inalienable right, far more than the yellowed property deeds, the Ottoman land registries, the iron keys to our stolen homes, or UN resolutions and decrees of superpowers could ever do.

THIS IS WHAT they want. The words tumbled through Sophie’s mind as she raced up the spiral staircase, counting her steps, trying to guess which door to take. The first handle she tried was locked. Another opened into darkness. A third revealed a path that glowed with eerie blue balefire sconces. The floor shook as she hesitated and threads of dust slipped through the ceiling, scratching her throat and making it hurt to breathe. She followed the flames. Back and forth the halls snaked—a careful maze, designed to deceive. Swallow. Separate. The tremors grew with every step, the shifting subtle but unmistakable. And too far away. No one else would feel the ripples swelling, like waves gathering speed. They were too focused on their celebration. Too caught up in their imagined victory. Too trusting. Too blind. Too late. The ground rattled harder, the first fissures crackling the stones. This is what they want. ONE THIS IS A security nightmare!” Sandor grumbled, keeping his huge gray hand poised over his enormous black sword. His squeaky voice reminded Sophie more of a talking mouse than a deadly bodyguard. Several prodigies raced past, and Sandor pulled Sophie closer as the giggling group jumped to pop the candy-filled bubbles floating near the shimmering crystal trees. All around them, kids were running through the confetti-covered atrium in their amber-gold Level Three uniforms, capes flying as they caught snacks and bottles of lushberry juice and stuffed tinsel-wrapped gifts into the long white thinking caps dangling from everyone’s lockers. The Midterms Celebration was a Foxfire Academy tradition—hardly the impending doom Sandor was imagining. And yet, Sophie understood his concern. Every parent roaming the streamer-lined halls. Every face she didn’t recognize. Any of them could be a rebel.

The world is a lonely place for those who don’t fall in line with its customs,” Danton said. “But know this: The only reason they mock you, the only reason they snicker and stare is because your differences—the very things that set you apart—illuminates their own vapidity. It forces them to look at themselves and think on what they could have been, if they’d had your courage. But people don’t like to do that so, instead, they’ll set their gazes upon you and criticize you for doing what they weren’t brave enough to do.

The match scratched and popped. Sylder meditated in the windshield the face of the man cast in orange and black above the spurt of flame like the downlidded face of some copper ikon, a mask, not ambiguous or inscrutable but merely discountenanced of meaning, expression. In the flickery second in which Sylder's glance went to the road and back the man's eyes raised to regard him in the glass, so that when Sylder looked back they faced each other over the cup of light like enemy chieftains across a council fire for just that instant before the man's lips pursed, carplike, still holding the cigarette, and sucked away the flame.

Then he dropped the paper in. We watched as the flames caught its edges and curled them into light, then blackness. The smoke that emerged was a blue so clear it surpassed the sky, the water, my father's eyes. And then, the fragrance. It was big and full, shimmering with a strength its scent-paper had never had. This was no brief window into a world. This was the thing itself. I closed my eyes and the cabin walls vanished. I could smell the sweet spice of just-cut grass, and a sparkling conversation of flowers- lush and creamy, sharp and quick, dusty and soft as memory itself. They came together like bird songs overlapping. There was sunshine, pulling out the fragrances with its warmth. I could feel it on my skin, surrounding me in a way the heat of our woodstove never could. I stood in the middle of it all, inhaling. I had never felt so full of anything before.

The voice of the crowd rises into one universal scream as we roll into the fading evening light, but neither one of us reacts. I simply fix my eyes on a point far in the distance and pretend there is no audience, no hysteria. I can’t help catching glimpses of us on the huge screens along the route, and we are not just beautiful, we are dark and powerful. No, more. We star-crossed lovers from District 12, who suffered so much and enjoyed so little the rewards of our victory, do not seek the fans’ favour, grace them with our smiles, or catch their kisses. We are unforgiving. And I love it. Getting to be myself at last. As we curve around into the loop of the City Circle, I can see that a couple of the other stylists have tried to steal Cinna and Portia’s idea of illuminating their tributes. The electric-light-studded outfits from District 3, where they make electronics, at least make sense. But what are the livestock keepers from District 10, who are dressed as cows, doing with flaming belts? Broiling themselves? Pathetic.

I have always found it difficult not to be moved by Jerusalem, even when I hated it—and God knows I have hated it for the sheer human cost of it. But the sight of it, from afar or inside the labyrinth of its walls, softens me. Every inch of it holds the confidence of ancient civilizations, their deaths and their birthmarks pressed deep into the city's viscera and onto the rubble of its edges. The deified and the condemned have set their footprints in its sand. It has been conquered, razed and, rebuilt so many times that its stones seem to possess life, bestowed by the audit trail of prayer and blood. Yet somehow, it exhales humility. It sparks an inherent sense of familiarity in me—that doubtless, irrefutable Palestinian certainty that I belong to this land. It possesses me, no matter who conquers it, because its soil is the keeper of my roots, of the bones of my ancestors. Because it knows the private lust that flamed the beds of all my foremothers. Because I am the natural seed of its passionate, tempestuous past. I am a daughter of the land, and Jerusalem reassures me of this inalienable right, far more than the yellowed property deeds, the Ottoman land registries, the iron keys to our stolen homes, or UN resolutions and decrees of superpowers could ever do.

FOLKSBIENE, an impoverished, frail Yiddish theater company in constant danger of annihilation, had outlasted all the giants. The year of Schwartz's death the little troupe moved into the Forward building, guaranteeing it a permanent home with four walls and a roof, plus heat in the winter, fans in the summer, and best of all, continuing subsidies from the newspaper and the Workmen's Circle. Sporadically, other Yiddish productions would take place in New York, but they were one-shots, musicals, and charity fund-raisers. Ensconced in their new place, Folksbiene managers claimed that theirs was the oldest continuously operating Yiddish theater in the world. As proof, all past productions were listed year by year, ranging all the way back to 1915. It was an impressive roster. Among the authors included were Sholem Aleichem, Leon Kobrin, and both Singer brothers, Israel Joshua and Isaac Bashevis; also the Russians Alexander Pushkin and Maxim Gorki; and such American authors as Theodore Dreiser, Eugene O'Neill, Sherwood Anderson, and Clifford Odets. It didn't matter how well attended those shows were, or how well acted, or the duration of their runs. The point was that the Folksbiene had survived, just as the Jewish people had survived. Together, they were the keepers of the flame. It was a very small candle in a very big city.

For Guerrero, racial and national divisions were deliberately promoted by the rich and powerful: Racial prejudice and nationality, clearly managed by the capitalists and tyrants, prevent peoples living side by side in a fraternal manner.... A river, a mountain, a line of small monuments suffice to maintain foreigners and make enemies of two peoples, both living in mistrust and envy of one another because of the acts of past generations. Each nationality pretends to be above the other in some kind of way, and the dominating classes, the keepers of education and the wealth of nations, feed the proletariat with the belief of stupid superiority and pride [and] make impossible the union of all nations who are separately fighting* to free themselves from Capital.

Terrance coughed. “If you want me to have faith give me a flame thrower.

If you were with me,' said Fionn, with a burst of wet anger. 'If you stayed with me!' 'But I'll always be with you, Fionn, no matter where I am. Don't you believe that?' Fionn eyed the candle. He hated the flame for its greediness, hated the wax for its paltriness. He curled his arms around his stomach. 'I'm not ready,' said Fionn. 'I don't want to say goodbye yet.' 'Then we'll say "see you later",' his grandfather said, shedding his melancholy as easily as a raincoat. 'We mustn't be sad.' It was like telling the sun not to shine or night not to fall. It was Fionn's condition - a pendulum that swung ceaselessly, from fear to pain, and pain to fear. 'All I am is sad.

Fionn sat down and pressed his fists against his eyes. 'But why can't we just be angry? Doesn't that feel much more satisfying?' 'Because gratitude for what we have been gifted is the antidote to the grief we feel when we must give it back.' His grandfather unfurled the burner flame from underneath the workbench and turned it on. 'Don't you think that would make an excellent fridge magnet?

I told you not to add the savoyola until the flame turned blue!” “No, you said red!” “Red heat makes it curdle and combust!” “I know.” “Then why did you add it?” “Because you told me to!

Marella snapped her fingers, and a small tongue of flame appeared in her palm, dancing across her skin with flashes of red, orange, and yellow.

I wouldn’t leave him here either, no more than I would say goodbye. Because this wasn’t goodbye. I would never utter that word to the keeper of my heart, and I would never relinquish the promise I’d made to him with the blood cut from my veins mixed with his own, which I’d taken from the wound that had stolen him from me. I had never wanted to be a queen. But now a crown of flames would ignite like a funeral pyre upon my brow, and my one and only “decree would be to seek out the end to all who had crossed me, and make them scream as they were forced to bow at my feet.

As Damien sets off on his perilous quest, I watch the door close behind him, feeling the gravity of the moment. In his absence, Sandra and I are not just two women waiting; we are sentinels guarding the gates, keepers of the flame that must not be extinguished.

Scrolls and sketches, paper and vellum in tidy stacks rested where she had left them. All her research and writing waited by the fireplace. The impulse to burn it all was gone. That had been last night’s pit of despair, a tarry darkness so deep that she had not even had the energy to feed the papers to the flames. Cold daylight revealed that as a foolish vanity, the childish tantrum of “look what you made me do!” What had Rapskal and the other keepers done to her? Nothing except make her look at the truth of her life. Setting fire to her work would not have proved anything except that she wished to make them feel bad. Her mouth trembled for a moment and then set in a very strange smile. Ah, that temptation lingered; make them all hurt as she did! But they wouldn’t. They wouldn’t understand what she had destroyed. Besides, it was not worth the effort to go knock on a door and borrow coals from one of the keepers. No. Leave them there. Let them find this monument to what she had been, a woman made of paper and ink and pretense.

I may not be the greatest practitioner to have graced the playing fields of Casterbrook, I may have chosen to squander my talents on pranks and japes, and I, most definitely, am not in the weight class of Nightingale… But I am a keeper of the secret flame, a sayer of the three sacred oaths, and a man who carries a staff of power. Except when it clashed with that evening’s outfit. But, metaphorically speaking, I carry it with me wherever I go.

never let it be said that Augustus Berrycloth-Young shirked his duty as a keeper of the secret flame. Not that I have the faintest idea where the secret flame might possibly be, although I assume that’s because it is a secret.

So by itself the Constitution could do very little. What it promised would require the efforts of all those who thenceforth called themselves Americans. It was they who must keep it, the republic and the grand and noble promise of that republic. That is the wonderful, spectacular genius of it all, and the terrible, sobering danger of it all too. The document and the men who created it put these unimaginably great and fragile things in the hands of the people. So these things—still unimaginably great and fragile—are in our hands now, this minute. We are ourselves this moment the keepers of the flame of liberty and the ones charged by Franklin and the other founders and by history past, present, and future with the keeping of this grand promise to the world.

By standing together, we’ll survive even when fear claws at our door. Think of yourself as a flame keeper, my dear. And never give up hope. Not even a grain of it.

For the last hour, each song had been like a match struck, leaving Zofia to bask in the glow of a golden memory. When the concert was done, those little flames had all snuffed out, relegating her to this cold, hard world where everything had changed. (p. 288)

Well, it seemed like a rum thing, but we wizards have a code and never let it be said that Augustus Berrycloth-Young shirked his duty as a keeper of the secret flame. Not that I have the faintest idea where the secret flame might possibly be, although I assume that’s because it is a secret.

He’s the Bargainer who saved my life over and over again, and the king who I ended up saving, a time or two. He’s a trickster, a secret-keeper. He’s the dark side of the moon. He’s my beautiful, terrible mystery. My friend. My soulmate. From flame to ashes, dawn to dusk—until darkness dies. He’s mine, and I’m his, always.

They have red hair,” he told my mother. “Flaming red hair,” he emphasised. “Father,” I asked, “Don’t Gurkhas have black hair?” My father looked at me squarely in the face. “No, daughter,” he said. “These ones don’t.

A special session of the legislature of the People’s State of Chile had been called for ten o’clock this morning, to pass an act of utmost importance to the people of Chile, Argentina and other South American People’s States. In line with the enlightened policy of Señor Ramirez, the new Head of the Chilean State—who came to power on the moral slogan that man is his brother’s keeper—the legislature was to nationalize the Chilean properties of d’Anconia Copper, thus opening the way for the People’s State of Argentina to nationalize the rest of the d’Anconia properties the world over. This, however, was known only to a very few of the top-level leaders of both nations. The measure had been kept secret in order to avoid debate and reactionary opposition. The seizure of the multibillion dollar d’Anconia Copper was to come as a munificent surprise to the country. “On the stroke of ten, in the exact moment when the chairman’s gavel struck the rostrum, opening the session—almost as if the gavel’s blow had set it off—the sound of a tremendous explosion rocked the hall, shattering the glass of its windows. It came from the harbor, a few streets away—and when the legislators rushed to the windows, they saw a long column of flame where once there had risen the familiar silhouette of the ore docks of d’Anconia Copper. The ore docks had been blown to bits. “The chairman averted panic and called the session to order. The act of nationalization was read to the assembly, to the sound of fire-alarm sirens and distant cries. It was a gray morning, dark with rain clouds, the explosion had broken an electric transmitter—so that the assembly voted on the measure by the light of candles, while the red glow of the fire kept sweeping over the great vaulted ceiling above their heads. “But more terrible a shock came later, when the legislators called a hasty recess to announce to the nation the good news that the people now owned d’Anconia Copper. While they were voting, word had come from the closest and farthest points of the globe that there was no d’Anconia Copper left on earth. Ladies and gentlemen, not anywhere. In that same instant, on the stroke of ten, by an infernal marvel of synchronization, every property of d’Anconia Copper on the face of the globe, from Chile to Siam to Spain to Pottsville, Montana, had been blown up and swept away.

She was not the one to start a fire, nor was she the one to play in it. She was the glorious, unrelenting light that could set fires through glass, that could spark an entire forest into everlasting flames with a single jolt of lightning. She was kindling, indeed, in her own magnificent and incomparable way.

THIS IS A TRAP, SOPHIE realized. But it didn’t seem to be the Neverseen’s doing. Somehow, some way, Keefe had set this up. So what was his plan? And why hadn’t he told her?! “I must say”—Fintan raised his hands, ready to call down flames—“you’ve really outdone yourself, Mr. Sencen. Miss Foster is an excellent addition to our bargain.” Keefe jumped in front of Sophie. “She’s not supposed to be here.” Brant’s scarred smile crawled straight out of Sophie’s nightmares. “Then we’ll consider her an excellent bonus.” Sophie hadn’t noticed that Alvar had vanished until she felt his arms wrap around her. She screamed and thrashed and kicked, but he was too strong. He pinned her arms behind her with one hand while he ripped her Black Swan pendant off her neck and tossed it to Brant. “Let’s leave the fires to the professionals, shall we?” Brant asked as he crushed the monocle under his heavy black boot. “I’ll take yours, too.” Keefe jerked away as Brant yanked the pendant off his neck. “Must we really do this again?” Brant asked, snapping his fingers and creating a sphere of Everblaze. “Not if you let her go,” Keefe said. “I’m finding it rather hard to believe your commitment,” Fintan told him. “Surely you’ve realized that switching sides means betraying your friends.” Sophie’s stomach switched to vomit mode. “What is he talking about, Keefe?” “You can’t guess?” Brant asked. She was developing some terrifying theories—but none of them made sense. Or they didn’t until Fintan asked Keefe, “Where’s the cache?

When it still wasn't enough, she dug deeper, reaching into her heart and tapping into that raw emotional well, where everything burned with a new kind of heat. It seared every thought as she gathered up the force of it, erupting into sparks as she blasted it into [his] consciousness--and the blue wind fanned the sparks into flames.

THIS IS WHAT they want. The words tumbled through Sophie’s mind as she raced up the spiral staircase, counting her steps, trying to guess which door to take. The first handle she tried was locked. Another opened into darkness. A third revealed a path that glowed with eerie blue balefire sconces. The floor shook as she hesitated and threads of dust slipped through the ceiling, scratching her throat and making it hurt to breathe. She followed the flames. Back and forth the halls snaked—a careful maze, designed to deceive. Swallow. Separate. The tremors grew with every step, the shifting subtle but unmistakable. And too far away. No one else would feel the ripples swelling, like waves gathering speed. They were too focused on their celebration. Too caught up in their imagined victory. Too trusting. Too blind. Too late. The ground rattled harder, the first fissures crackling the stones. This is what they want. ONE THIS IS A security nightmare!

But I am a keeper of the secret flame, a sayer of the three sacred oaths, and a man who carries a staff of power. Except when it clashed with that evening’s outfit.