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For seven hundred years, my people have been enslaved without voice, without hope. Now I am their sword. And I do not forgive. I do not forget.
The Golds didn’t just kill her. They killed what I’ve always wanted to be—a husband and a father.
‘Home isn’t where you’re from, it’s where you find light when all grows dark.’
I’ve always thought of Lykos as my home. Of Eo as my home. Perhaps that’s where I’m going now. To see her. To die and find home again in the Vale with my wife.
Before I draw my last breath, I must build the world she wanted to raise our child in. That was her dream. That was why she sacrificed, so others would not have to. And I will not let others decide my fate. Not now. I do not trust in Ares if it means I must reject Eo.
“Then today, res, non verba.” Actions, not words.
But I cannot think only of the Red girl. When I see the moon, I think of the sun: Mustang burns in my thoughts. If Eo smelled of rust and soil, then the Golden girl is fire and autumn leaves.
Golds, in many ways, are so like Reds. Helldivers go to their deaths for their families, for the pride of their clan. They do not whimper when the mines collapse around them or when the pitvipers come from the shadows. They fall and their friends weep and sweep their bodies aside. But we have the Vale to look forward to; what have the Golds?
There wasn’t a cruel bone in her body. Not one. But it didn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if we’re good or we’re evil. It’s all up to chance.”
When falls the Iron Rain, be brave. Be brave. —LORN AU ARCOS
‘The duty of the son is the glory of the father’?”
“Hands, I think, were not meant to feel so much.” “Mine have felt more than I’d wish,” I say. I feel the snap go through them that I felt at Eo’s hanging. The texture of her hair. I remember the warmth of Pax’s blood. The chill of Lea’s pale face in the cold morning after Antonia butchered her. The grainy red smear of haemanthus blossoms. Mustang’s bare hip as we lay by the fire.
His sadness is like a weight that nearly drives me to tears. Yet I’m buoyed by the strange feelings of having him back, standing with me, gripping me. It is a humbling thing knowing someone cannot live without you, knowing that though they’ve betrayed you, they wish for nothing but absolution.
Even the cruel feel pain. And even the cruel can change.
“And there’s the beauty of space. A billion paths to choose.”
“Pliny is a leech,” I say. “A liar as much as you’re an honest man.” “And that makes him dangerous. Liars make the best promises.”
Trust is why Red will have a chance. We are a people bound by song and dance and families and kinship.
“Tell all who will hear, the Reaper sails to Mars. And he calls for an Iron Rain.”
For some reason I think I could have been capable of great evil. Maybe that’s the guilt. Maybe that’s the fear of a life where I never knew Eo. I don’t know. Or maybe it’s the fear of knowing how easily I fall to pride.
Act like a god, get followed like a god. Register?”
“I can’t do this without you.” After a desperate moment, “Are you with me? Sevro?” He pulls back and wipes snot from his nose, muddying his face. Tears make lines in the mud as he looks up at me, voice cracking like a child’s. “Always, Darrow. Always.”
And what is the bloodydamn point of surviving in this cold world if I run from the only warmth it has to offer?
“Roque,” I call to him plaintively. “Friendships take minutes to make, moments to break, years to repair,”
