The Light of All That Falls (The Licanius Trilogy, #3)

by James Islington

“Asar once told me that they did it because nothing is truly beautiful unless it can be lost,”

“There is no point in life for the sake of living, Tal’kamar. My people

are gone, and this fight was one we already knew that we could never outlive. Death is a journey I am willing to take, now.” He leaned in toward Alchesh, Sever outstretched.

“I do not want to, and I know that this is a hard truth to bear. One of the hardest. But I didn’t wish to keep it from you, either. Truth can be a burden, but secrets are poison.”

listening to a piece of music and judging the composer by how skillfully the musician is playing it. The question that needs answering isn’t ever ‘who acts better.’ It is easy to seize upon the worst of groups—but every group is a collection of individuals, and every individual is flawed. Some are contrary, some are outright liars when they say that they believe in something. So every action has to be assessed against what someone claims they believe, not simply seen as a result of it.” He shrugged. “Does that make sense? You should never judge the sides of an argument simply by who is doing the arguing.”

“When something is self-evident. When something is inescapably true. Then yes. I believe it is right to crush the concepts that oppose it from existence. Because they are not ideas, Tal’kamar. They are lies.”

They couldn’t let trying to survive here strip them of everything that made that survival mean something.

If something is not clearly right or wrong then it bears actually figuring out which one it is, not dismissal into some nebulous third category. If you have a basis for your morality, a foundation for it, then there will always be an answer—and if you do not, then trying to decide whether anything is right or wrong is an exercise in futility and irrelevance.”

“Law is about order, not right and wrong,” Taeris agreed. “And the latter should always trump the former.”

“So it’s not about being deserving or not deserving,” said Raeleth quietly. “It’s about whether you have a grudge.”

“Because hurting someone is not teaching them a lesson, Davian. As you pointed out earlier—we can hate what they do, but we should never hate them.”

intelligent man who is unafraid of being mocked or even harmed for his beliefs. He not only has morals, but he understands why he has morals—which is why even though being here with me is testing him, he is able to remain civil.

From the way everyone else was looking at him, it was working, too. It felt strange to see the young man he had sat around campfires with just a couple of years ago—and who, Caeden knew, had dealt with so much hatred simply because of who he was—be looked to with such hope. There were Gifted and Administrators giving him those looks, too, not just the soldiers.

“It’s not enough to fight for the right side. You have to figure out how to fight the right way, too. If winning is truly all that matters, then we’ve lost sight of what’s actually right and wrong in the first place.”

“Choice is meaningless without consequences, and a privilege we do not deserve if we will not face them. You are facing them, Tal’kamar. You have changed.”

He paused. There was absolute silence below, every eye on him. “I am not going to lie to you. I am asking everything of you now. There’s no retreat. Anyone who remains under my command here, is here until we win or we die.” He kept his voice firm, steady. “So this is your last chance. Our odds are slim. Our purpose is to buy time—that is all. We are the delay. We are the sacrifice.” He swallowed. “If you stay, I will be commanding each of you not to retreat. Not to surrender. To fight until your last breath. If you are not prepared to do that, leave now and there will be no judgment. I have a Vessel that will create a portal

out of here, out of range of the Gil’shar’s weapon—though I cannot promise that where you’d be going will be any better.” He smiled tightly, fiercely. “But if you do stay, I promise you one thing. The Gil’shar will not forget

“Sometimes it’s hard to see the extent of your vanity until it’s too late.”