Empire of Silence (The Sun Eater, #1)

by Christopher Ruocchio

before the planet fell.” Strange, isn’t it, how the greatest disasters in history often feel hollow and abstract, like distant thunder? A single death, wrote one ancient king, is a tragedy, but a genocide can only be understood through statistics.

..

am glad he did not see my future, for it was not a future either of us would have chosen for me, fraught as it was with hardship and suffering.

Then something happened that I have never forgotten, something that changed my world as surely as if a passing comet had altered my orbit. My mother wrapped her perfumed arms around me, not speaking. I stood there paralyzed. Not once in nearly twenty standard years—not once—had either of my parents shown me an ounce, an instant of physical affection. That one embrace made up for nearly all of that. I

I locked eyes with my mother. “Thank you,” I said. Those were the last words I ever spoke to her, and as it always is with last words, they were not enough.

And for once—perhaps for the first time—I knew what it was to be among friends and was content.

told you, Your Reverence. You don’t know everything.”

have stopped believing that it is up to any man to decide what other men deserve. I have met saints punished for their virtues and monsters praised for their monstrosity. I have been both sorts of creature.

But perhaps the world was perfect and it was myself who was hideous.

The man who hopes for the future delays its arrival, and the man who dreads it summons it to his door.

“Wars aren’t won with soldiers, sir. Not unless you’re willing to kill every single enemy in the galaxy. Wars are fought with soldiers, but they’re won with words.” I would rue that pronouncement—the naivety of it—and as I write it here, my heart blackens with the irony and the bitter knowledge that I was wrong.

always forward, always down, never left or right.

If what I have done disturbs you, Reader, I do not blame you. If you would read no further, I understand. You have the luxury of foresight. You know where this ends. I shall go on alone.