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They say a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand. They made no mention of the heart.
Were I still the man Eo knew, I would have stood frozen in horror. But that man is gone. I mourn his passing every day. Forgetting more and more of who I was, what dreams I held, what things I loved. The sadness now is numb. And I carry on despite the shadow it casts over me.
It was he who launched the escape pod without me. I always knew his friendship was conditional. Yet still the wound gnaws deep, carving in me a loneliness I can’t express. A loneliness that I’ve always felt among these Golds, but tricked myself into forgetting. I am not one of them. So I sit there in silence, staring out the window as we pass the gathered fleet and wait for Luna to appear.
How cruel a life, that the sight of my dead wife means hope.
All the family I could have had. A wife. Sons. Daughters. Grandchildren. They’ve been slaughtered before they ever were. Eo will never hold our daughter. She will never kiss our son to sleep and smile over at me as his little hands clutch my finger. I’m all that’s left of that family that could have been. A dark shadow of the man I was meant to be.
“Arcos will care,” I whisper. He stiffens. “What did you say?” “Lorn au Arcos will care if his last student dies,” I say, dropping the falsely ragged breath, straightening proudly. Cassius stares at me as if he’s seen a ghost. He hesitates. So too do those who hear what I say. “While you ate, I trained. While you drank, I trained. While you sought pleasure, I trained from the weeks after the Institute to the days before the Academy.” “Lorn au Arcos doesn’t accept students,” Cassius hisses. “Not for thirty years.” “He made an exception.”
I fucking love this reveal. I was wondering why Darrow was quoting and fangirling over Arcos so much
“So you are a student of Lorn’s after all. Did he tell you why he abandoned his post? His duty?” She looks at Lysander. “Why he abandoned his grandson?”
OH SHIT. Was Lorn fuckin Octavia??
Another flash of lightning and he appears, floating in the bitter storm like the ugliest angel ever shit out of heaven.
Sevro is the most relatable yet simultaneously the most unrealistic lol
Mustang reaches back to squeeze his forearm, hand smaller than his elbow. He preens like a hound with a pheasant in its jaws, looking around to see if we all noticed her compliment. She’s got a way with men bigger than bears.
I want to be Mustang and have an army of sweet, deadly barbarians that are loyal to me
“Do you now? I had a son like you, once, Lysander. But I’m sure you knew that.” “Adrius au Augustus,” Lysander says, knowing the lineage.
Foreshadowing… Lysander is likely similar to Jackal.
Everyone turns and looks at me. Not because I’ve said something strange but because they’ve been waiting to turn and look at me. They’ve all been silently praying I would marshal a plan. Even Augustus. Eo said people would always look to me. She believed I had some quality, some essence that gave hope. I rarely feel it in myself.
They said this was suicide at the Academy when I wanted to launch myself. Maybe they were right. But this is why I was made. To dive into hell.
“Attention, crew of the vessel formerly known as the Vanguard, hereafter known as the Pax.”
Pax died too soon and I’m still pissed about it
“Godchild Andromedus, I am Ragnar Volarus, the Stained firstborn of my mother, Alia Snowsparrow of the Valkyrie Spires north of the Dragon’s Spine, south of the Fallen City, where the Winged Horror flies, brother of Sefi the Quiet, breaker of Tanos, which once stood by the water, and I make you an offering of stains.”
The most metal of fuckin entries into a story EVER
Yellow teeth are revealed as he smiles, and from him undulates a war chant deeper than the ocean at storm.
We talk about anything but the things we should. Innocent and quiet, like two moths dancing around the same flame.
“No one knows of these people,” she says. “No one but a handful of Golds with access. The human spirit tries to break free, again and again, not in hate like the Dark Revolt. But for love. They don’t mimic each other. They aren’t inspired by others who come before them. Each is willing to take the leap, thinking they are the first. That’s bravery. And that means it’s a part of who we are as people.”
Inter-color marriages. Love is the hill people are willing to die on
She puts a finger in the air. “No. Don’t speak. It’s not your turn just because I pause.”
I feel this in my bones, my soul, the very fabric of the universe
“Yet it was for family. It was for the people I love even if they don’t deserve it. Many have sacrificed more. I could sacrifice that.”
She goes silent as all that has welled up inside her breaks loose. She does not sob. But the tears come. She’s the type of woman to be embarrassed by them. It breaks me to see this. “You are not wicked,” I say as I take her hand in mine. “You are not cruel.” She shakes her head, trying to pull away. I take her jaw between the fingers of my right hand and bend her head till her eyes find a home in mine. “And what you do for the people you love cannot be judged. Do you understand?” I deepen my voice. “Do you understand?” She nods.
How did Pierce Brown know I needed to hear this?
“To think about what hands feel,” Lorn mutters. “These have felt the lifeblood of my sons as their hearts pumped it out of their bodies. They’ve felt the cold of a razor’s hilt as they stole the dreams of youth. They’ve worn the love of a girl and a woman and then felt those heartbeats fade to silence. All for my glory. All because I chose to ride the sea. All because I do not die easily as most.”
“Hands, I think, were not meant to feel so much.”
“You meet a man, you know him. You meet a woman, she knows you.” He laughs to himself about some memory. “Might be easier thinking her some terror in the night. But she’s flesh and blood. She has friends. She has family. And she thinks you a threat to them.”
Women >>>
He does not answer me for a spell, and it’s then that I know the moment I’ve dreaded most is nearly upon us. “In another life, you would have been one of my sons, Darrow. I would have found you earlier, before whatever happened that filled you with this rage. I 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. Now all I can give you is a chance. Icarus,” he booms.
Lorn is the greatest Gold of his time
wonder, could I ever love her? No. No, in another world, Mustang would never be a warrior, would never be cruel. In any world, Victra would always be this. Always a warrior, like Eo really. Always too wild and full of fire to find peace in anything else.
“What do you suppose they would think of us?” I ask. “Of man?” “I suppose they would think we’re beautiful, strange, and inexplicably horrible to one another.”
“Do you even know the history of the things you try to break?”
Mustang knows without a doubt he is going to tear the whole establishment down
“Love and war. Same coin. Different sides. I’m too wrinkled for either.” “Maybe war will breathe some life into your old bones.” “Well, I tried love last month.” He leans close. “Didn’t work like it used to.” “Too honest, Lorn.” I can’t help but laugh.
For the first time, he seems small and old to me. It’s not his wrinkles. It’s what he says. He is a relic. Thoughts like his belong to the age I am trying to destroy. He can’t help what he believes. He’s not seen what I’ve seen. He’s not come from where I’ve been.
The best of the Golds is still not
good enough if all men are to be equal
Slaves do not have the bravery of free men.
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.
Obsessed with this little goblin
They carry all of humanity’s strengths, except one. Empathy. They can change. I know that. Perhaps not now, perhaps not in four generations. But it begins today, the end of their Golden Age. Shatter the Bellona, weaken Gold. Drive the civil war to Luna itself and destroy the Sovereign. Then Ares will rise. I don’t want to be here. I want to be home, with her, with my child who never was. But can’t be. I feel the tide inside me go out, baring old wounds. This is for you, I tell her. For the world you should have lived in.
“What if it’s just a Gold trick? Someone pulling strings to make Society go the way they need it to go. What if it’s all a lie?” Sevro looks at me for a long moment, then he hops up on a banister and howls at the top of his lungs down at the hangar bay. The bay howls back. It comes from Grays. It comes from Obsidians, from Oranges. It comes from Reds working on tubes. And it comes from the Golds who requested transfer to my ship. “That’s no lie.”
Chilllllllssssss
“May the Furies guide your swords and the Fates bring you home. Till then, my love is with you all.” The profession of love startles the Golds. Roque’s com clicks off and we can hear him on the main frequency giving orders to attack an enemy destroyer. “What a Pixie,” Sevro mutters, but even a child could catch the tremor in his voice. He’s afraid.
Modern war is fearing the air, the shadows, fearing the silence. Death will come and I won’t even see it.
Some men have threads of life so strong that they fray and snap those around them. Enough friends have paid for my war. This one’s on me.
All I am, I put into this moment. My life in the mines, the hours suffering with Harmony, the horrors at the Institute. All the love I’ve earned and lost and still wish to live for, I let burn in me.
She’s wrong. It’s not over. All I see behind my eyelids is a world of war. There is no other future for me, for us. Yet how many times have I already been pieced back together? How much longer can all these stitches hold? In the end, will there even be pieces left of me? I can’t stop crying. Can’t even catch my breath. Heart thundering. Hands shaking. It all comes out of me.
This a moment I thought I would never have again as I dug Eo’s grave with my own trembling hands. A moment with a woman I want and love. And what is the bloodydamn point of surviving in this cold world if I run from the only warmth it has to offer?
“I always knew a Gold couldn’t lead this rebellion. It has to be from the bottom up, boyo. Red is about family. More than any other Color, it is about love amid all the horror of our world. If Red rises, they have a chance to bind the worlds together. MidColors won’t. Pinks, Browns, can’t. Obsidians have failed before. And if they succeeded alone, they’d break the worlds instead of freeing them.”
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.
I respect Darrow for this so deeply and it was truly time
“Eo was not a cruel girl, you know that,” she says, pushing back so she can look into my eyes. “She loved you with everything she had. And I loved her for it. But I always feared she’d make you fight her battles. And I always feared how much she loved to fight.”
LOVE some of the criticism of Eo leaving Darrow alone to fight this battle
His mind is vast. Worlds beyond my own. And perhaps for the first time, I really understand how this man can do what he does. There is no morality to him. No goodness. No evil intent when he killed Eo. He believes he is beyond morality. His aspirations are so grand that he has become inhuman in his desperate desire to preserve humanity. How strange to look at the rigid, cold figure he casts and know all these wild dreams burn inside his head and heart.
