Morning Star (Red Rising, #3)

by Pierce Brown

heresy told by wicked prophets with wicked aims. For a summer and a winter it has slithered through us. Poisoning my people and the people of the Dragon Spine and the Blooded Tents and the Rattling Caves. Poisoning them with lies that spit in the eye of our people.” She leans down from her throne, blackheads huge on her nose. Wrinkles deep ravines around pitch eyes. “Lies that say a Stained son will return and he will bring a man to guide us from this land. A morning star in the darkness. I have sought these heretics out to learn of their whispers, to see if the gods spoke through them. They did not. Evil spoke through them. And so I have hunted the heretics. Broken their bones with my own hands. Peeled their flesh and set them upon the rock of the spires to be eaten as carrion by the fowl of the ice.”