Prologue: Bittersweet Victory

Elexis had told her who the girls were, both of them. The lost girls, the lost sisters, lost queens. She had told Elexis to give up on the fire that burned across the sea, but Elexis had told her to leave. It was ripping them up, this girl that Elexis had lost and had found again. If she could, she'd snuff out that little fire that was burning Lexi up from the inside out. But she couldn't, they wouldn't let her.

So all she was left to do was watch Elexis suffer, and hope she would have the sense to put out the fire herself. Hope that her queen would realize that this parasite was only bringing more death upon them. Hope that her queen would think of the destruction of Fire Forest, the bodies of those dead by that girl's hands, of the cracks that she saw starting to form on Lexi's heart from all the wounds this girl has left, and see sense.

This girl that boiled and burned- she  would bring them to ruin, she would bring Lexi to ruin. And she didn't want that to happen. She didn't want to lose another person to this war. Even more than that, she realized, she didn't want to lose Lexi.