City of Miracles (The Divine Cities, #3)

by Robert Jackson Bennett

“The…The awful choices we make to survive.” She laughs. “Is it even worth it?”

Sometimes I wonder if we’re little more than walking patchworks of traumas, all stitched together.”

engineers are so brilliant, up until they aren’t.

My definition of an adult is someone who lives their life aware they are sharing the world with others. My definition of an adult is someone who knows the world was here before they showed up and that it’ll be here well after they walk away from it. My definition of an adult, in other words, is someone who lives their life with a little fucking perspective.

“Nokov is not the most dangerous thing walking this earth,” says Olvos. “He never was. None of the six Divinities ever were. That title is reserved for a player who has yet to make their appearance. Though you will come to know them in due time.” She stands and looks down at him, and once again her eyes are like distant flames.

“You have a choice, a choice I never did. You have a choice to be different. You, who have defeated many by strength of arms, you will have a moment when you can choose to do as you have always done, or you can choose to do something new. You, a man who has never forgiven himself, who believes he deserves all his ills, you will have a moment to reconsider. And in that moment, the world will teeter upon a blade of grass, and all will be decided thereafter. Walk it carefully.”

All things end. Just as the stars fade and mountains fall, all things end. But that does not mean there is no hope.”

“I mean I think this is not the first time this has happened,” she says. “Not by far. Imagine this, child—a world is born, and mortals and Divinities are born into it. Some mortals get access to the gods, others don’t. Conquest begins, enslavement, until there is a great war, and someone finds a way to slay the gods. The old Divinities are overthrown, and their children inherit the world—and rewrite it. They erase reality and rewrite it, birthing a new world, with new mortals, new gods, new origins, new conquests, and new wars. The old ways and the old gods are forgotten, as if they’d never happened. The world doesn’t even remember they were ever alive. And it all starts all over again.”

Nokov strides forward through the fire, the flames licking his black skin. “I will be different.” “How many tragedies follow those words,” says Olvos quietly.

She could have struck him down where he stood. She could have killed him in an instant. Yet she didn’t. He wonders why she didn’t. He can’t understand why she didn’t.

Love this so much

Malwina turns to look at Alvos’s outstretched hand. She is silent for a long while. Then she says softly, “I never liked being me much, anyway.” She takes her hand.

“You are as powerless as I was. The world is written upon your heart just as it is mine. Pick up all the weapons of all realities and use them all as best you can, Taty, but you cannot inflict virtue on the world. You cannot.”

whispers. “I gave so many of my own years to wrath, and I stole so many years from other people. How selfish I was. How many wonders I ignored….If only I had looked beyond my pain. If only I had laid aside my torment, and chosen to live anew. But I did not, and I lost so much.

freedom and human happiness has a direct relationship to the number of people who have power over their own world, their own lives. Far too many people still have no say in how they live. The more that power is dispersed, the more that will change.

“Close your eyes. I’ll be here in the morning.”

“My daughter did that,” says Sigrud weakly, nodding at the lights on the shore. “She did that. She made all that happen.” The two women support and embrace him as he watches as Voortyashtan fades into the distance. “She did that,” he whispers, as if wishing that the world would hear, and notice. “And I am very proud of her.” It won’t last forever, he knows. Not even that will last forever. But it will last a while.