Golden Son (Red Rising Saga, #2)

by Pierce Brown

“History is written by the victors.”

would not have raised you to be a great man. There is no peace for great men. I would have had you be a decent one. I would have given you the quiet strength to grow old with the woman you love.

Death begets death begets death, and ever more.

he knew justice would finally find him in the end.

“Better to go into that other world in the full glory of some passion than to fade and wither with age.

“Time does not prove one’s loyalty.” Lorn scoffs and runs a finger along a scar on his forearm. “Scars do.”

Always too wild and full of fire to find peace in anything else.

wisdom is found in the heart, not the head.

If you’re going to tell everyone else they can choose their destiny, then you damn well better do the same.”

Men can change. Sometimes they have to fall. Sometimes they have to leap.”

“Why plan?” he asks. “You plan. You decide. I do or I do not, there is no plan.” He considers his next words carefully. “Mortals who plan die a thousand times. We who obey die but once.”

“For seven hundred years we have been enslaved, Ragnar. Your people. My people. We have languished in darkness. But there will come a day when we walk in the light. It will not come from their mercy. It will not come by fate. It will come when brave hearts rise and choose to break the chains, to live for more. You must choose for yourself. Will you choose the hard path? Will you choose to be my friend? Will you rise with me? Or will you go as all who have gone before, never knowing what might have been?”

Slaves do not have the bravery of free men. That is why Golds lie to lowReds and make them think they are brave. That is why they lie to Obsidians and make them think it is an honor to serve gods. Easier than the truth. Yet it takes only one truth to bring a kingdom of lies crashing down.

If your heart beats like a drum, and your leg’s a little wet, it’s ’cause the Reaper’s come to collect a little debt.

Momentum is everything to a Helldiver, to military endeavors, to life. Keep moving and dare someone to get in your path.

A Helldiver again, if only for a moment.

These Peerless thump their chests in salute to me. The monsters. They go with the wind, chasing power. But they don’t realize power doesn’t shift. Power is resolute. It is the mountain, not the wind. To shift so easily is to lose trust. And trust is what has kept me alive. Trust in my friends, and their trust in me.

“In the fading days of autumn,” I say, voice loud and bold, “the Reds who mine the bedrock of Mars wear masks of happy ghouls to celebrate the dead claimed by the red soil, to honor their memories and subdue their spirits. We Aureate took those masks and made them our own. We gave them the faces of legend and myth to remind ourselves that there is no evil, no good. No gods. No demons. There is only man. There is only this world. Death comes for us all. But how will we shout into the wind? How will we be remembered?”

“Make your blood proud long after death claims you.”

“The cities are to be taken. The Golds who will not bend, killed. The lowColors protected. We will not collapse the mines. We will not rape her cities and despoil her verdant grounds. We are to capture the bounty of Mars. We do not want to take her corpse. She is home to many of you, so harm only the pest that destroys her from within. And when the glory of the day is over—when you wipe the blood from your sword and give the cloth to your sons and daughters, so they will remember you were party to one of the greatest battles since the Fall of Earth—remember, you have made your own destiny. It was not given to you by the Sovereign. It was not given to you by a governor. You took it like our ancestors took the worlds. We are the Second Conquerors.”

it weakness, not strength, to abandon decency for that strange darker spirit.

I try to think it a stupid, solemn thing, all these men and women with their pompous silence and their attention to tradition. But this is the history of mankind in the making. And there is a nobility to the moment.

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.

I don’t believe you’re being the man you want to be. If you survive this and I don’t, be better than the man who tricked his friend.”

Hopefully you’ll grow old enough to realize that Achilles was a gorydamn fool. And we’re fools all the more for not realizing he wasn’t Homer’s hero. He was warning. I feel like men once knew that.”

And what is the bloodydamn point of surviving in this cold world if I run from the only warmth it has to offer?

That’s what Society does—spread the blame so there is no villain, so it’s futile to even begin to find a villain, to find justice. It’s just machinery. Processes. And it rumbles on, inexorable till a whole generation rises that will throw themselves on the gears.”

We’re just mortals opening Pandora’s box. And before everything turns upside down, I need to remember what I’m fighting for. I need to know it’s worth it.”

The garden isn’t as perfect as it was in memory. And neither was she. She was impatient. She could be spiteful for small reasons. But she was a girl. Not even seventeen. And she gave the most she could, did the best she could with what she had. That’s why I will always love her, and it is why I know whether or not she would give her blessing for what I go to do. My heart can’t stay here in this cage she herself has fled. It must move on.

“It’s you,” she says softly, as though I will disappear like a night vision if she says the word too loudly. “It’s you.” Her voice is different, slurred. “You know me?” I manage desperately. “How could I not?” Her smile is twisted, left eyelid sluggish. Life has been less kind to her than to me. She’s had a stroke. It breaks me to see her body fail her. To know I wasn’t here for her. To know her heart was broken. “I would know you … anywhere.” She kisses my forehead. “My boy. You’re my Darrow.”

Mother picks the girl up in her arms. “The dead can always hear us, my love. Why else do you think we sing? We want them to know that even though they are gone, we can still find joy.” Cradling my niece, she turns to look at me as she takes the first step up the stairs. “That’s all they’d want for us.”

The brightest minds enslaved to an economy that demanded toys instead of space exploration or technologies that could revolutionize our race.