Iron Gold (Red Rising Saga, #4)

by Pierce Brown

Because when the law is not obeyed, the ground is fertile for tyrants.” I sigh. “You’ve been reading again.” “Damn right. The Golds hoarded our history so they could pretend they owned it. It’s my duty as a free man to read so I’m not blind, being led around by my nose.”

Sharing a life threads more than flesh and blood together. It weaves her memories in and around and through mine. The more I know of her, the more I share of her, the more I love her in a way the boy I used to be never knew how to love. Eo was a flame, dancing against the wind. I tried to catch her. Tried to hold her. But she was never meant to be held. My wife is not as fickle as a flame. She is an ocean. I knew from the first that I cannot own her, cannot tame her, but I am the only storm that moves her depths and stirs her tides. And that is more than enough.

We hold each other’s hands, a life full of wedding skirts, births, and love reduced now to a single second of fear.

“And I rather think it the habit of an indolent mind to indict a single man for a civilization’s failure.”

“That is part of your Red genetic character. Your yearning, your need to sacrifice. Brave pioneer. Toil, dig, die for the good of humanity. To make Mars green. We designed you to be the perfect slave. And that’s what you are, Darrow. A slave with many masters. Change your eyes. Take our scar. Break our reign. It won’t change what you are at your core. A slave.”