Iron Flame (The Empyrean, #2)

by Rebecca Yarros

“I might be a stranger to you, Violet, but you are far from a stranger to me. Eventually, you’d discover the truth. Maybe not while in the Scribe Quadrant, but certainly by the time you made captain or major, when Markham would start bringing you into the fold, as we do with most at those ranks, and then you would unravel everything in the name of mercy or whatever emotion you’d blame, and they would kill you for it. I’d already lost one child keeping our borders safe, and I wasn’t willing to lose another. Why did you think I forced you into the Riders Quadrant?” “Because you think less of the scribes,” I answer. “Bullshit. The love of my life was a scribe.” Steadily, we climb, twisting along the staircase. “I put you into the Riders Quadrant so you’d have a shot at surviving, and then I called in the favor Riorson owed me for putting the marked ones into the quadrant.”