Red Rising (Red Rising Saga, #1)

by Pierce Brown

Red is rising,

She left me. She left me tears and pain and longing. She left me to give me anger, and I cannot help but hate her for a moment even though beyond that moment there is only love.

There’s nowhere to wipe the blood, only stone and two naked bodies. This is not who I am, who I want to be. I want to be a father, a husband, a dancer. Let me dig in the earth. Let me sing the songs of my people and leap and spin and run along the walls. I would never sing the forbidden song. I would work. I would bow. Let me wash dirt from my hands instead of blood.

And so I will remember this death. It will burden me as it does not burden my fellow students—I must not let that change. I must not become like them. I’ll remember that every sin, every death, every sacrifice, is for freedom.

“So, you’re who they call the Reaper,”

We destroy House Minerva in minutes.

I am the Reaper and death is my shadow.

Man cannot be freed by the same injustice that enslaved it.