Iron Gold (Red Rising Saga, #4)

by Pierce Brown

Behind me, through the open doorway, electric signs and high-resolution digital flesh fishhook the eyes, pulling travelers from their trams or private aircars. Jerking them headlong into the vestibules of commerce to pump blood and cash into the veins of this hinterland city. It’s the sort of place you go to forget about your life. But, in the irony to end all ironies, it’s where mine began.

Wild writing here

“No,” I confess. “But opportunities multiply as they are seized.” “Don’t quote Sun Tzu at me like it was your idea. Her ‘help’ could be anyone. It could be the gorydamn Ash Lord himself.”

“I didn’t have anything in my pockets. Did you put the candy in there?” He turns to me with a mischevious smile. “Sometimes, little one, it’s best if the worlds think you a little mad.” He winks. “Inspiring what they’ll let you get away with.”

I love kaxvax

He makes adjustments to a dissembled black hasta in his lap. Longer than the razors of the Interior, it stretches to two meters in its active, rigid form, resembling a lance. Silver figures are etched into the metal. It is not their ancestral sword, Starfire. That was lost at the Reaper’s Triumph when his father’s corpse was robbed—its owner now a great mystery.

🧐🧐🧐

Winkle, a nihilistic, sleepy-eyed Green, is our lead cyber operations officer. His face is a pincushion of piercings and fashionable digital tattoos. He’s particularly fond of monsters, and a blue dragon perches on his neck, its tongue slithering up his chin. His hair is acid green and defies gravity.

The History of the Conquerors exhibit is closed; Warden barriers block it off. A flock of Coppers in front of me titter like jungle helions about there being some sort of terrible theft a few weeks back.

A necropolis of animalistic spires flecked with topaz, zircon, and myriad nesosilicate rocks looms above us, blocking the sky like the petrified remains of a great dragon host. They perch rank upon rank along the Boösaule’s crest, some of them encompasing whole peaks, legs straddling frosted valleys, their wide wings buttressing their great heights as they crane their stone necks up as if to drink the gases of marbled Jupiter. Duroglass windows glitter with internal light, like scales. And deeper in the heart of the mountain, where long ago Red drillcrews dug out the interior, lies the city itself.

10/10

The fleeting notion of apologizing vanishes. “Bit of advice. Get as far away from them as you can, as fast as you can. Or they’ll just chew you up and spit you out.” “If I wanted advice, you’d be the last person I’d ask.” With that, she leaves.

What a pair they were. What an end they had.” “No,” he whispers. “This is not the end. I loved you before I ever met you. I will love you until the sun dies. And when it does, I will love you in the darkness. Goodbye, wife.”

😭😭😭😭😭

I pull the key Pax gave me from my neck and put it in my bag, setting aside the father, welcoming the Reaper, and letting the old rage take hold.

You've been the reaper the whole time!!! Rage has never left!!! I'm mad at Darrow