Sparking Fire Out of Fate by Brigid Kemmerer

"Betrayal lodges in my heart like a hot coal trapped behind the grate of the hearth."

In this final installment of the Forging Silver into Stars trilogy, Grey has been chased from the Crystal Palace in Syhl Shallow and has returned to Ironrose in Emberfall, leaving his wife Queen Lia Mara to rule her country alone. Like with the first two novels, the continuation of Grey and Lia Mara's complicated love story is a delicious side plot to compliment the story of Tycho, Jax, Callyn, and Alek.

Tycho, who promised he'd only be gone for a few days, returns to Emberfall after months away from Jax. Jax had spent his alone time making friends and a not-so-secret admirer. They both feel a little guilty; Tycho per usual looking to hide his emotions behind a wall of toxic masculinity, and Jax trying to hide his emotions with fake indifference. Both agonize over the distance growing between them, neither willing to yield.

Callyn is living under the weight of her anxiety; Alek upon learning her secret in the last book threatened her to leave or he'd tell everyone the truth. She didn't leave and at some point, he's going to find out. The relationship established in books one and two is broken. He feels like she lied to him about the thing he hates most in the world. She loved and trusted him and once he knew the truth, he couldn't love her back. Both are left feeling betrayed by the other.

I quite liked that this book started off with damaged relationships. No, I'm not a ghoul, I liked the fluffy romance of the last two books but... Character growth. Character growth is part of why the relationships that were once comfortable suddenly became so strained. They're all different people in book three than they were at the start of book one. They've grown. And if they want to repair the damage they've done to each other, they have to grow some more.

I liked the super-fast pace of the story, it made the book hard to put down. BK sense of timing is excellent; she knows exactly how long to stay in a moment and when to leave it before the reader gets bored. And there was no boredom for me in this book, I read it in two days.

Oh, and I think I stated in my review for the last book that there was too much blushing going on? This book had way less of it. I think the last book had someone blushing on each and every single page. This one, just once in a while. I don't know why excessive blushing in novels bugs me, it just does. Just thought I'd put that out there in case it's your pet peeve too.

And the ending was my favorite kind: happy.

My thoughts on this trilogy as a whole, is that it was very well imagined. The writing and storytelling were both consistent, and the characters showed growth as they traveled. I feel like it outshines its prequel, the Cursebreakers trilogy, so if you liked that you might love this.