Howling Dark (The Sun Eater #2)

by Christopher Ruocchio

Surely it had been sequenced by some vile magus in the very pits of Vorgossos, wearing the faces of others because its own was abhorrent. Almost I could pity it, but for the fact it had escaped and made for itself a mean, vile heaven of the hell of its life. Master though it was of its own destiny, the world had turned it cruel, or perhaps cruelty had been its nature. Evolution would not have shaped a beast with such teeth for kindness, and Evolution is blind. Men are not. Those teeth then and the vileness of its shape were either a cruel confirmation of purpose or a maleficent jape, like poisoning the thorns on a rose.