Risen (Alex Verus, #12)

by Benedict Jacka

All of a sudden, my fear was gone, replaced by rage. I wasn’t afraid that the adepts would fire. I was sick of everything, sick of killing people and sick of this stupid pointless war, and I turned back to the kitchens and shouted at the top of my voice. “I DO NOT HAVE TIME FOR THIS SHIT!” I kept yelling, all of my anger and frustration boiling over. “Every one of the Council soldiers behind me would like nothing more than to just pull the trigger on you all and go home! I come out under a flag of truce to talk and you do this?” I pointed the sovnya down at the adept’s body; the white flag flapped, stained with his blood. “You are not heroes! You were not brought out here to fight for freedom, or justice! You were brought here as cannon fodder for a war you don’t understand! If you die here, you will not be remembered as martyrs for a noble cause! You’ll be remembered as a bunch of idiots too stupid to figure out that they’d already lost!”