Empire of Silence (The Sun Eater #1)

by Christopher Ruocchio

Alone again in my chambers, I had no room for tears. I fell back against my door, sank to the floor, chest heaving. I shut my eyes for a long time, my mind retreating past sleep and madness to a place of utter stillness where rage smoothed itself to a quiet burning. I sat there a long time, legs splayed out on the tile before me. I could feel the blood in me moving and the tears starting to come. Dimly my dream came back to me: Gibson standing tall, his nose cut. I wondered at that and at myself and so opened my eyes. My wonderment vanished at once, buried by cold fear. My coat—the one I had thrown across the top of my footlocker—lay on the furs at the end of my bed. That was wrong. Half crawling, I hurried to it and threw open the lid of my footlocker. I threw clothing and the gathered detritus of my life every which way. I had to punch my leg to stifle a sound that was at once a wail of grief and a howl of fury and a sudden conviction that I too was whipped. The Kharn Sagara book was gone.