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whatever you’re feeling, you keep it inside. You keep it inside because that’s where it’s safest.
“For he who earns the dragon’s punishment, let his home be his tomb.” He gave the order to his dragon, and her home became a tomb.
“When you try to defy us, we take everything.”
Everything. That is what he’s become for me, this boy who kneels beside me as I stare down my family, my court, as if I were alien to them.
“The Callipolan has been . . . sunlight to my darkness, my lord.”
As Annie remembers my father, Rock remembers Crethon; and where my father was known for being harsh, Crethon was known for being cruel.
Grant mercy, my lord, on your servant undeserving.
“These mere words, these stupid ideals: Those who don’t have them, underestimate them. They can’t imagine that your tiny flame of purpose could turn into a fire to burn down a world. They can’t imagine that such featherlight words will give you strength to endure the harshest pain. They can’t imagine ideas could be more powerful than dragonfire.
“You will have a candle in hand. A flame guttering in the wind. You will have to protect it. For a time, you may have to take it underground. And then you will have to decide how to use it. Will you make a conflagration, and build in the ashes? Will you light a lantern and climb, hoping that your light will be enough for those below? Or will you choose to light the way for someone else?”
I told myself for a while, cornered and in desperation, that climb I must. But now I remember I was never supposed to climb. The way was always for Annie, for the first lowborn Firstrider of Callipolis, who now flees routed, hunted, and condemned by the regime her people died to overthrow. The light was always meant to shine for her.
All that I am belongs to Callipolis. By the wings of my dragon I will keep her. Let my will be her protection. Let my reason guide her to justice.
Serfs who were given land in the Revolution are being reduced to tenants again and charged rent, expensive city work permits are being issued that prevent peasants from leaving the fields—”
When a government ceases to protect its people, it becomes necessary to overthrow it.”
“I just wanted it to be in writing, somewhere. I wanted it to be in writing that it was you. For me. It’s always been you.”
I was yours when I had nothing, no family or name. My lord, to me you have been a mother, a father, A brother, and a flowering husband, Yet now you go before me to the house of the dead.
Power sounds pleased with himself. “Nuts for her. Head over heels, would die to save her, in love with her. It’s completely unrequited, she and I both know it, and yet here I am hopelessly, madly in love with Antigone sur freaking Aela.”
“Some of the bravest women in our lives have been peasant women, Annie. They’re why we’re here. Even if they go unsung.”
Sing to me, Muse, of the Revolution’s Daughter who after Uriel sur Aron, after Pytho, after the triarchs of old ages and the corruption of their reign came lowborn to defy them: Who was expelled from her home, fell from all grace, and rose on a dragon’s wings.
Who deserves death, if not this boy, who let the horrors he saw as a child burn him from the inside out and then inflicted those wounds on everyone and everything he touched? On me, on my country—
I have loved the son of those who killed my blood. I have erected monuments for my fallen oppressors and returned the bodies of my enemies to their kin.
I took a vow to guide the City to justice. And justice has always been found by way of my mercy. The only way forward is to look into the face of the one who deserves my hatred and do better. Let Ixion be tried for his crimes as I was by the system I have sworn to serve. A system that—albeit imperfectly—grants power and penalty based on merit. If that system can find me innocent, then it can find him guilty.
