Harrow the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #2)

by Tamsyn Muir

I loved you with my whole rotten, contemptible heart—I loved you to the exclusion of aught else—let me live long enough to die at your feet.

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“You both had more grit at seven years old than I ever had in my entire life,” said Ortus. “You are the most worthy heroes the Ninth House could muster. I truly believe that. And that is why I am staying. I am not a hero, Harrow. I never was. But now that I have died without hope for heroism in life, I will hope better for heroism in death. And therefore I will fight the Sleeper with you.”

THE ONLY THING OUR CIVILISATION CAN EVER LEARN FROM YOURS IS THAT WHEN OUR BACKS ARE TO THE WALL AND OUR TOWERS ARE FALLING ALL AROUND US AND WE ARE WATCHING OURSELVES BURN WE RARELY BECOME HEROES.

It had bewildered her, back at Canaan House, how the whole of her always seemed to come back to Gideon. For one brief and beautiful space of time, she had welcomed it: that microcosm of eternity between forgiveness and the slow, uncomprehending agony of the fall. Gideon rolling up her shirt sleeves. Gideon dappled in shadow, breaking promises. One idiot with a sword and an asymmetrical smile had proved to be Harrow’s end: her apocalypse swifter than the death of the Emperor and the sun with him.

I love you so much, Mercy; I will love you three until the end of time, until there is nothing left of me but the remnant atoms of the God and man who loved you.

“Then let us not seek out forgiveness, but forgetfulness,” he said. “Bury me next to you in that unmarked grave, Joy. We knew that was the only hope we ever had—that we would live to see it through … and pray for our own cessation. Oh, we’ll still hate each other, my dear, we have hated each other too long and too passionately to stop … but my bones will rest easy next to your bones.”