Godslayers (Gearbreakers #2)

by Zoe Hana Mikuta

You’re assholes, I pray, but maybe that isn’t the right word for what I’m doing. Is there another word for when humans speak to Gods? Did we bother to make one? You’re assholes, every single one of you.

Worship is merely attention; it can be hatred and fear as much as it can be love.

Eris looks at me, and I realize, with a strange, perfectly calm clarity, that she loves me. She cannot look at me as the gunfire starts with so, so much fear for me and think I won’t know what it means. You cannot love someone and think they won’t feel it.

War is only able to eat its way forward across generations because the others have a singular face, and it’s blank. It’s easier to fight, easier to kill when it’s just a tally knocked off Godolia’s numbers, when it isn’t real, breathing people, not really. Just the heavy, sick hate sitting in your gut.

Juniper hurriedly clapped her hands together before the thought could settle. “Well, that’s absolutely terrifying. I love you, Sona, and all of you, very, very much.” Palms clasped, she looked to Eris. “Let’s stay close together forever.”

“It was worth it,” I whisper, words murmured into her skin. “Everything that happened to me. Everything I am going to carry with me, and hurt for—it was all worth it, because it dropped me right next to you. I love you. I love you while the world is ending, and I love you when it goes still.”

“You did not believe it was true, that I was this,” he says. “I love you for it, and for so much else.” He takes another step back, feet moving over ruptured glass. “I … I wish I were not this.”