Golden Son (Red Rising Saga, #2)

by Pierce Brown

The winged girl has become a carrion bird and she doesn’t seem to have noticed. I wonder if she’d smile so broadly if she had to kill all those people with a knife. How easy we make mass murder.

He always thinks because I’m reading, I’m not doing anything. There is no greater plague to an introvert than the extroverted.

Consider that I was vulnerable. Lonely. And that perhaps I fell into Cassius’s bed because I was hurt and needed a salve to my pain. Can you imagine that? You may answer.” I squirm on my cushion. “I suppose.” “Good. Now shove that idea up your ass.” Her lips make a hard line. “I am not some frill-wearing tramp. I am a genius. I say this because it is a fact. I am smarter than any person you’ve ever met, except perhaps my twin.

“Phobos. Father was a Docker, born outside the Sects. Died when I was small. A young girl has to be on her toes if she wants to grow big in the Hive dock cities. It’s the only way to beat the monsters.” “It’s not the only way,” I say. “No?” she asks, surprised. “You can always become a monster too.”