The Pariah (Covenant of Steel, #1)

by Anthony Ryan

“To be wasteful of time is to be wasteful of life,”

There are things folk will voice to strangers they would never confess to friends or family, for a stranger’s judgement matters little.

all ambition is folly when it fails to be matched by reason.

The chance to indulge cruelty without consequence is often irresistible, especially to those born to the daily struggle for subsistence.

Every man is a liar, but the worst lie is the one he tells himself.

“Understanding should bring wisdom,” she told me. “But it will be drowned if you surrender to the indulgence of wrath.”

We are the victims of a world made wrong, and its wrongness could be made right if only every victim saw the truth of it.

Cowardice had always felt like a redundant concept to one born to a day-to-day struggle for mere survival. Some fights could be won; some could not. You fought when you had to or when you knew you could win. What shame was there in running from death? A deer felt none when it ran from a wolf.

just want you to know. If I should die today…” the grip on my hand suddenly took on a painful, vice-like tightness as her eyes flashed, bright and savage “… it’s your fucking fault!”

“What it is to love a god, Alwyn. And what a fate to be loved in return.”