Love is a War We Choose to Fight
When the Roses Fade
I know I’m late with this dispatch. February is already fading; the roses and greeting cards of Valentine’s Day have been exchanged, and the “day of lovers” has been forgotten for another year. But that is exactly why I’m writing this now.
We tend to celebrate love as a soft thing, don’t we? We like to paint it in pastels and talk about “happily ever afters.” But in the world of Morian, and often in our own, love is not safe. It is reckless. It can even be an act of defiance.
The Blade and the Bandage
In my prequel novella, Divided Together, I explore the origin of the one who will eventually save a fractured world and mend the broken kinship of its people. It begins with two people who, by every law and norm of their lands, should have been enemies: General Ahrien Que, a Black Elf warlord, and Shavanti, a human healer.
Their love wasn’t a courtship; it was a collision.
Ahrien Que is a man of iron and blood who commands the respect of his people. Shavanti is a woman not only of mending and mercy but also of great power and destructive potential. To choose each other was to choose certain exile. It was reckless. It was desperate. But it was also the only thing that made sense in a world gone mad.
The Hardest Act of Love
We often think love means holding on; gripping someone so tight that the world can’t tear you apart. But as I wrote Ahrien and Shavanti, I found a harder truth: Sometimes, the only way to love someone is to let them be exactly who they are, even if it scares you to death. Even if it tears you both apart.
Ahrien had to accept that Shavanti would walk into plague camps where he could not protect her. Shavanti had to accept that Ahrien was a weapon of war, and that asking him to be peaceful would be asking him to cease to exist.
They found enormous power in their brief but explosive love story, not in changing each other, but in witnessing each other. They stood back-to-back against the dark, distinct and dangerous, yet indivisible.
The Cost of Defiance
This March, I want to give you their story.
Divided Together is the chronicle of that desperate, defiant love. It is the story of how two people looked at the laws of gods and men and said, “No.”
If you are a subscriber, you will receive a FREE electronic copy of Divided Together next month. It is the perfect entry point into the lore of my first Graethean Chronicles novel, Touch of the Eternal, and a reminder that while love can save the world, it can also burn it down.
Let them be themselves. Even if it burns.
Until next time,
J. James Adler