The Fires of Vengeance (The Burning, #2)

by Evan Winter

“The only way to get as far as you have, considering what they think of us, is to become undeniable.

“It’s because the powerless, having no understanding or experience with how much real power can save or destroy, think too simply. They see things as either right or wrong, but the world and the purposes of those in it are distorted, misjudged when reduced to so basic a binary.”

To be understood, he’d speak the one language the powerful share with the powerless, the language of pain, fear, and loss. The powerful had to be shown that people can only be pushed so close to the flame before they catch fire and burn everything down.

“Oh, you wish me to be civil?” Tau asked the larger man. “You want me to play the part of a Noble when you’ll never give me the same consideration as one. Is that the game?” “What are you talking about?” “I can smile and talk as sweet as cane sugar. I can follow every rule you’ll ever make, and it will never be good enough for people like you, because people like you don’t see me as people,” Tau said, pulling a handspan of black dragon scale free from its scabbard.

Tau knew the sentiment would be hard to accept, but with no smile, no mockery, and no insincerity, Themba asked, “Why, then?” Tau kept marching, limping. “Because the limits to which we’ve been yoked were never ours, and the stories we’ve been told about our nature, our insignificance, and our lack, they were never true.”

Tau’s leg felt like it was being scourged, but he increased his pace, daring the pain to stop him. “That’s not it,” he said. “The lie isn’t that we can’t be their equals. The lie is that they were ever anything but our equals.”

Advancing, Tau shook his head. The fury was coming back. “After me, there is nothing.”

“Rage is love… twisted in on itself,” he said, using some of the words she’d spoken to him on the night Zuri died. “Rage reaches into the world when we can no longer contain the hurt of being treated as if our life and loves do not matter. Rage, and its consequences, are what we get when the world refuses to change for anything less.”

Nyah waved away his objection. “If your ideas hold merit, they’ll win out in spite of your person.” “Yes, that’s the lie everyone unaffected by hidden hardships believes.”

“Champion Solarin,” Kellan said, “don’t give in to the lie that you honor the dead or Gifted Zuri Uba by closing your heart forever. Grief, anger, they’ll hold you for a time. They must. But if you let them root and fester, they’ll become a hate that will consume you.”

“Lady Gifted, as far as I know, the only path to becoming what others cannot is to suffer what others will not.”

“That’s one of the many problems with treating Lessers the way Nobles do,” he said. “There’s more of us than them, and when we finally refuse to survive on the scraps they throw us, our numbers will make all the difference.”

“Buhari, you’re young, but you’ve lived and achieved enough to know that the things we mean to do rarely match the things we actually accomplish. If she’d had her way, it would be the end of who we are. You must see that.”