Redemptor (Raybearer, #2)

by Jordan Ifueko

I had pined my whole life for a family. Now that I had cobbled one together, dysfunctional and cursed as it may be . . . nothing would snatch it from me.

Love is delightfully complicated.”

“I was born a security risk.”

the distance between us had returned with rising force. Sometimes I felt the wall even when we slept, nuzzling into the shape of each other at night.

“Traditions are made to be broken.”

My family missed the love-starved girl from Swana. The one who worshipped her friends, and whose anger could be cooled with a kiss. They missed the tree in its gilded pot. The girl so afraid of herself, and so grateful for a family, the world could burn to ash, and she would smile and call it paradise.

“Maybe they know that no matter how much I care, no matter how hard I try . . . it’ll never be enough.”

They are spoiled by privilege. Numb to the true cost of change.

ever since I was little, there’s always been this dread. This haunting thought that I’m doing something wrong. That I am wrong, that I’ll always be alone, that everyone will always leave me. I never even realized the voice was there . . . not until I met you, and it was gone.

But now the clouds had finally caught up to us . . . so we opened the floodgates, and spoke in thunder.

“Why is everyone so at peace with how things have always been?

And if only one person saw the systems—the brushstrokes, the tiny actions forming a mural of injustice—then that person was responsible. She had to do something. She had to fix it.

the world didn’t care about justice, then I would simply have to care enough for all of them.

You don’t get to choose why people love you. But what you do with the love you receive . . . that’s a choice you make every day.”

She wanted to be there, in your arms. Wanted the whole world to know how vulnerable you make her.

I think I’d rather be hated as a weakling than loved as a monster.”

The sun kite escaped, dancing in circles on the wind, then drifting to a dot in the cloudless Oluwan sky. Someday I’ll be free like that,

“There’s nothing shallow about appreciating beauty.”

“Try to forget it! Pretend that it isn’t true. Pretend you don’t know what it means when pelts run cheap, or when furs sell for a song. Go on—drape your grand mantles! Clothe your bodies with a child’s suffering!”

I think, perhaps, there’s a way humans can die while their hearts are still beating.

“Oppression doesn’t rest. So why should we?”

Those who fought for justice were always alone—the ghosts who haunted me had made that clear.

“You’re a woman who rules equally with a man,” he said dryly. “They’ll always call you a witch.

It isn’t enough to pay for past abuses. I have to find a future to live for too.”

It was like something woke inside me. Passion—something I’ve been afraid of my whole life. I knew how dangerous it was to long for change, especially change of a system, something beyond any one person’s control. But I couldn’t help it. For the first time I felt . . . restless. I chafed at the apathy of others, chafed at all the time I had wasted.

not confuse guilt with conviction. Guilt is self-centered, and leads only to destructive obsession. But conviction brings balance—a sense of purpose beyond oneself.

“Do not ask how many people you will save,” I murmured: “Ask, to what world will you save them? What makes a world worth surviving in?”

Why did the health of the empire, the lives of millions, have to depend on a tiny subset of wealthy people being kind?

“I want to live,” I said, replacing Ye Eun’s lily behind my ear, “because life is . . . is worth it. Because as long as we can imagine a better world, we should stick around to see it. Even if it doesn’t exist yet. Even if we have to build it from scratch, brick by muddy brick.”

“I forgive you,” I said, and to my surprise, I decided that I meant it. For now, anyway. Some days I would change my mind. My mother’s toxic legacy was permanent, like the scars on Dayo’s face, and whenever I dwelled on it, I’d be livid all over again.

“No matter how bleak the world gets, I’ll make sure there’s always a corner to plant flowers.”