While I regret my fondness for violence out of a Red sense of guilt, the old-blood Gold bathes in its furor. Not the glory Cassius loved, or the noble fight Alexandar chases, or the cathartic revenge Sevro needs, but the primal essence of battle itself. Never is Thraxa more alive than after thirty days in the field, crusted with saddle sores and sweat, hunting men who have never been prey. “I like to kill people I don’t like,” she once said when Pax asked why she follows me. “And your daddy brings ’em like flies.”
