Legend (Legend, #1)

by Marie Lu

Metias kissed me on my forehead. “Forever and ever, kid, until you’re sick and tired of seeing me.”

<33 ;)

I make a silent promise to my brother’s killer.

I will hunt you down. I will scour the streets of Los Angeles for you. Search every street in the Republic if I have to. I will trick you and deceive you, lie, cheat and steal to find you, tempt you out of your hiding place, and chase you until you have nowhere else to run. I make you this promise: your life is mine.

My first tracking mission: Day.

Day killed my brother. I know this because we found a stolen ID tag lying halfway up the third-floor stairwell, which led us to the soldier pictured on the tag, who stammered out a description of what the boy looked like.

In one of his past crimes, he crept into a quarantine zone by tying up a street policeman.

He once vandalized the side of a military building. He’s stolen money, food, and goods. But he doesn’t set roadside bombs. He doesn’t shoot soldiers. He doesn’t attempt assassinations. He doesn’t kill.

So why Metias? Day could’ve made his escape without killing him. Did Day hold some sort of grudge? Had my brother done something to him in the past? It couldn’t have been accidental—that knife went straight through Metias’s heart.

Day’s exploits used to fascinate me. But now he is my matched enemy—my target. My first mission.

I gather my thoughts for two days. On the third day, I call Commander Jameson. I have a plan.

I’m more worried that I’ll accidentally kill my opponent.

see a boy holding out his hand to me. He has bright blue eyes, dirt on his face, and a beat-up old cap on, and at this moment, I think he might be the most beautiful boy I’ve ever seen.

I helplessly drift back to thinking about her.

don’t know if anyone’s ever told you this,” he begins. He doesn’t blush, and his eyes don’t dart away. Instead I find myself staring into a pair of oceans—one perfect, the other blemished by that tiny ripple. “You’re very attractive.”

take a breath before he touches his lips to mine.

I crouch in the shadows of a chimney and turn my mike on.

theres a type it should be mic not mike

“Thomas,” I whisper, “I found him.”

Day didn’t fail his Trial. Not even close. In fact, he got the same score I did: 1500 / 1500. I am no longer the Republic’s only prodigy with a perfect score.

These black marks look like rifle grease. Almost like the streak of grease that was on Thomas’s forehead when I first saw him that night.

I’d once been fascinated by his legend—all the stories I’d heard before I met him. Now I can feel that same sense of fascination returning. I picture his face, so beautiful even after pain and torture and grief, his blue eyes bright and sincere. I’m ashamed to admit that I enjoyed my brief time with him in his prison cell. His voice can make me forget about all the details running through my mind, bringing with it emotions of desire or fear instead, sometimes even anger, but always triggering something. Something that wasn’t there before.

Day’s words will matter if he’s telling the truth.

“Few people ever kill for the right reasons, June,” he said after a long silence. “Most do it for the wrong reasons. I just hope you never have to be in either category.”

“Each day means a new twenty-four hours. Each day means everything’s possible again. You live in the moment, you die in the moment, you take it all one day at a time.” He looks toward the railway car’s open door, where streaks of dark water blanket the world. “You try to walk in the light.”

I love this