Dark Age (Red Rising Saga #5)

by Pierce Brown

no longer believe in the Vale. I am the walking dead. Woe to those who cross my shadow.

How can anyone not, when death is just a blind giant with scissors?

“All of a man’s affairs become diseased when he wishes to cure evils by evils,” Atlas recites. “For order, I impaled soldiers. For liberty, you drowned cities. The victor writes history with the blood of the vanquished. I wonder, in the end, which of us will turn out the hero? Don’t you?”

“He will. Love may give one wings, but everything burns when it flies too close to the sun.”

“What does Mars mean to you, Nakamura?” I ask. The Terran hesitates. “Hope. And you, my liege?” “War.” I turn on a heel for the hangar.

But the real change is in his eyes. The look of childish wonder is gone forever. Now they hold the dullness that marks the passage into wisdom.