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And the dragons Chose. They call us humble-riders.
I taste her lips, taste her tongue, taste her mouth like I seek to drown. I did it for this. For you. Annie, warm in my arms. Is it enough?
“The rider,” I tell her. “The one who brought the body, from Callipolis. You’d never believe it, Agga. She was Firstrider, like Julia. But she was a peasant, like us.” Agga gives a watery laugh of awed delight. “She told you?” “She looked Ixion in the eye and told him.”
Dreams are deadliest for the dreamers.
“It seems the Callipolans have inspired dragonborn ladies all across the Medean.”
Because whatever else I wondered after kissing Annie—after coming back to Annie, after saying things I shouldn’t have to Annie—the one thing I knew was that I was not in a place to be with anyone else.
All of this, in a few words, like a delicate flower plucked from the earth and offered. For me to cradle in my hands or crush under my heel, as I choose.
For a moment I look up at them and remember my parents, and try to memorize it: Annie on Pallor’s back. Black satin perched on silver scales, flaming hair in the dark, the halo of her face turned toward mine, trusting.
think of how Atreus said it: The role of a leader is to recognize talent when you see it.
“Together,” he says, his voice shaking. “We do this together.” “Together,” I repeat.
She holds my gaze with a blush on her cheeks and smirk on her lips. I could kiss her in front of all these asses.
For the first time I glimpse how we could do this, not just tonight but from now on. Together, side by side, we’re like a Damian warship. Buoyant, impenetrable, precise.
This is our story, and tonight we will own it.
Revenge doesn’t need to begin with a knife. It can begin with a well-delivered speech.
How can someone be so beautiful, so brilliant, and so wrong?
Fog rolls in layers over a darkening sky as we launch to flush the scouts; when we burst through the last layer, the sun is still setting above: stars to the east, gold to the west.
I’ve never in my life felt such a clench of love for a stranger as I feel in this moment for this miracle of a girl.
The only atonement I can offer for my crimes, the only thanks I can give for her mercy. Let me answer her honor with honor, where they think we have none. The true gift of freedom is to act with this civility.
This grief, I think, it’s like a dirty house I abandoned that even years later I know how to crawl through blind.
“You’re here,” she says. Like she wants me to be. “I’m here.”
Even if we were never to kiss again, even if it were never more than this, it would be enough just to hold you.
Anyone can start a fire. The problem is what happens after.
Already was a fool, tonight, a happy, lovestruck fool kissing him in the darkness.
This Lee, I loved. This Lee who was able to love me. Even after a childhood raised on the belief that I wasn’t the kind of being worthy of it. I read his piece and thought: Who am I, with all my mercenary considerations, to stand in the way of such beautiful hope?
You have a warm heart for such chilling deeds.
“Stop doing what it takes. Start asking yourself what’s needed.”
I feel alive. Alive and furious. As if with pen to paper here, on the edge of a second revolution, the Vault in our hands and dragons on our roof, these words have the power to reshape the world.
“I’ve been waiting for this day since they gave you a dragon.”
Strength isn’t the problem. It’s what you do with it.
It feels brilliant and blinding and free, the clarity that comes with this realization. We’ll set our sights on the stars together. But they’re different stars, and we’ll stand back to back.
Before I turn away, Lee’s lips brush against my ear. “Raze them to the ground.”
It’s only now, looking into the sleepy face of Griff’s niece, that I finally believe it. For this girl, I’m not the bitch commander. I’m Antigone sur Aela, Firstrider of Callipolis. I’m everything the Revolution promised.