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The sun has raged for 4.6 billion years. I have raged for sixteen.
But it is the coward who grooms a man for his defeats. The coward who makes him accept them because he is accustomed to finding a good reason to quit.
I believe if we are defined by the conflicts of the past we will never grow to anything better than a gnarled reflection of ancient feuds.”
The railgun in its left arm lowers, as does the giant pulseFist in its right, and from its cockpit, amplified by its external speakers, comes a bloodcurdling howl.
Under a bird’s nest of hair, a demonic, bearded face black with grease screams in the stuttered light of the starShell’s deluge.
We don’t have the right to do anything except all we can do.”
We achieve perfection first by acknowledging our failures. We increase understanding first by recognizing our ignorance.
“If you wish to be repaired, you must first be broken,”
“In life, it is very tempting to forget the past to try and make a perfect future. But the past, and the pain we have endured…they make us who we are.
“I think…if love is anything, it is truth. If life is anything, it is struggle.
Victra murmurs. “You’re the bookish one. Was it a man who said ‘hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’?” A lancer brings her gauntlets. “It must have been—to imagine something so petty as scorn to be the utmost misery a woman could suffer. What, I wonder, would he make of a mother who has seen her husband sold like meat and her babe nailed to a tree?” She dons her gauntlets. “Perhaps: wrath, I am thee? They come for our children, Virginia.” She turns to me and cups my face with one hand. “Do not fear for me. Instead, pity them.”
“Sefi once told me fruit is never sweeter than after you’ve eaten shit.”
“They will mourn later. For now it is enough they know their brothers would smile to see them living. So they smile for their brothers, for they had a good death. Later they will miss them. Later they will mourn.”
Golds are a faithless breed, founded in the gross sobriety of atheism, but the rest of the Colors are willing to believe.
“You don’t have me by the throat. You have me by the balls. You can wrench and twist and it will cause me terrible agony. But in the end, they are just balls, and I am a woman, so I will go on, enduring without my balls and I will pester you with death by a billion cuts. Except it won’t be me. I am not a captain who goes down with his ship. I am a Sovereign, who will delegate to people more suited for tunnels and darkness and the horrors that happen there.”
away. I’ve read through The Path of the Vale enough to know that some currents cannot be fought, no matter how good a swimmer I think I am.
I am not as confident as I pretend to be, but how can you lead if you cannot walk—and how can you walk if you fear every step?
Forgetting is essential to learning, just as exhaling is essential to breathing. Breathe out, then in. Find the self, then lose it once again. Thus, the path goes ever onward.
In the cold prison of our minds, we are alone with our self-hatred, our doubts, and guilt. No one more than Sevro. A friend may reach through the bars and hold our hand, but they cannot open the door for us. Only the prisoner has the key. All I can do is remind him we’re waiting for him when he gets out.
“Darrow is not to blame for this war. Gold is. The hierarchy gave humanity the stars, but the decadence and cruelty of our rulers gave us this rebellion. You told me once that we have forgotten who we are, Lysander. You were right. We are not kings. We never were meant to be. We are shepherds. Shepherds do not rule. They guide. They nurture. They protect. Because they know it is not the shepherd who produces. It is the flock. Without the flock, we are just beggars with sticks and esoteric rites. It is our time to find humility. To show we are more than autocrats. I need you to be the man you
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“I must. I am Cassius Bellona, son of Tiberius, son of Julia, brother of Darrow, Morning Knight of the Solar Republic, and my honor remains.”
He is not fast. Not injured and in dead armor. But he is determined and he is brave and he is tough and he is clever and he is daring. He is only things I admire in him in that moment, and none of the things I don’t.
“Lysander was an obligation. You were an aspiration. He was so afraid on our journey to the Core. So nervous to see you and be rejected. But when he saw you respected him, valued him, he shined like a star. His path led back to you, because you made him feel loved. That is all that matters, Darrow. When he died, he knew he was loved. So when you think of him, when you feel sad, remember that.”
Cassius had a heart like Eo, though it took him longer to find it.
I love you. I am coming home. I have an army. I have an armada. We will win. For Eo, for Ragnar, for Fitchner, for Cassius. For them all.
