A Desolation Called Peace (Teixcalaan, #2)

by Arkady Martine

To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles—this they name empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace. —Tacitus (quoting Calgacus), Agricola 30

To hear that there was nothing of how you loved one another that was clean.

Deliberately, she thought in Stationer, We’re not free. And in the same language, Yskandr agreed: <There’s no such fucking thing.>

It felt like her gaze had weight, weight and edges, a sudden revealed landscape of places to cut oneself open on.

How clearly she saw what Amnardbat was, in that moment: a person who so loved Lsel Station that she’d replaced her ethical responsibilities with the appalling brightness of that love, and didn’t care what she burned out to preserve it.