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stupid young children crammed into a classroom at Sinegard, when they had yet to realize that the war they were training to fight wasn’t hypothetical.
History moved in circles—she’d learned that very well by now.
Altan burning on the pier, a miserable end to the miserable life they’d given him.
Hate was its own kind of fire and if you had nothing else, it kept you warm.
“I’m not Sinegardian elite. I’m that savage, mud-skinned Speerly bitch that wiped a country off the map.
That was oddly calming—this kind of poverty felt familiar.
Oh, how she’d craved this fight.
What is wrong with me?
How, after so much time, could old hurts sting so sharp?
No wonder they acted as if they owned the world. To them it must seem so small.
I should have jumped, she thought. I wish I were dead.
War didn’t end, not so cleanly—it just kept building up in little hurts that piled on one another until they exploded afresh into raw new wounds.
A pang of nostalgia hit her stomach like a club,
Arabak, a city with more than a thousand years of history, seemed to have simply been erased.
Worshippers on the top, and sinners on the bottom,
“You’d need a lot of firepower.” “Oh dear,” Rin drawled. “I wonder how we’ll manage that.”
We were from nowhere, so we wanted to rule everywhere.”
They’d have to claw their way into heaven.
She’d loved him like a father once.
It didn’t matter that those treasures were hallmarks of Nikara history. That history didn’t matter to Rin. It was a record of slavery, oppression, misrule, and corruption.
“I am the end and the beginning. The world is a painting and I hold the brush. I am a god.”
Now here they were again: three people—children, really; too young and inexperienced for the roles they’d inherited—holding the fate of Nikan in their hands. And Rin was poised to acquire the empire Riga had wanted, if only she could be just as cruel.
Oh, but history moved in such vicious circles.
I will never recover from this book
Dying was easy. Living was so much harder—that was the most important lesson Altan had ever taught her.
She was a goddess. She was a monster. She’d nearly destroyed this country.
She terrifies him, and he loves her so much it hurts.
