More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
“The edge of glory cuts both ways. Condolences. He was gifted. Loss…it is never easy.”
All that for a slice of moon and a grind? If that’s not a loss, what do you call it?” The old soldier frowns. “War, dominus.”
Yea u lil pixie
It was Holiday who told me if I forget to feel the cost, I will grow accustomed to it.
I weep after my visits. I am jealous of their faith. Jealous they cannot see the struggle from my seat.
They do not crave freedom for themselves. They crave freedom for others, for those yet unborn. In that I find a dignity greater than any Gold virtue.
I push with Niobe through the mob to see Victra striding in looking like hell warmed over.
SHES SAFE! SES ALIVE THANK YOU GOD
“And gifts. Cicero au Votum.” She thrusts forward Cicero on the end of a leash and holds up a rotted head. “And Ajax au Grimmus. The rest of him couldn’t make it.”
MY GOD
Gone is the little boy from Octavia’s garden, the one who used to lose to me at chess over and over again, never tiring of it.
“I am here. Above his planet. Talking to his wife. Where is he?”
Wooof
That is consistency against intense competition, Lysander. For twelve years now. One battle does not make you a lord of war.”
SHE BITES BACK BABY
“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.
Oh my god lol
“Let me understand, just so we’re clear, I’m to aid your war effort because I find you marginally less detestable than Atalantia au Grimmus,”
“And you will have to give Ajax’s head back, Victra.” Victra grimaces. “But I was crafting a chalice for Sevro.”
I LOVE HER
For a moment, she looks sad. Can she not see what I am doing here? She will. They all will. After I finish this blasted war.
“All my energy is focused on this war, Julia. I literally don’t care about anything but our path forward.” “That’s a little pathological and unhealthy.”
Why do i love her
Build up a massive fleet until we attack. Everyone does. Even Helios. He’s already complaining about it. I say we shock the worlds. Hit them in three days. A full Iron Rain with everything we’ve got.”
Oh lord
“I want the Morning Chair.
He finally says it
He’s your champion, in private at least.” I frown. Could have fooled me. “Don’t abuse him, please. He’s far more gentle than he appears.”
“Lysander, you are bleeding.” I check my wounds. “Your eyes.”
HOLY SHIT. Atalantia?!?!
Then my husband’s face appears on the viewscreen above the menu, and I stare at him like he is the first man I’ve ever seen.
There was Cassius, as distracting a man as has ever been made, but he was so used to drawing all eyes to him that he needed to be witnessed to spark.
His eyes are soft, yearning, and do all but reach out across the void and embrace me. “Lo, Mustang.” His masculine voice stirs up the silt of love, and the part of me that’s been dormant since he left awakens. “Lo, Reaper,” I whisper.
MOM AND DAD
I was so angry at his departure I’d nearly forgotten how comforting he is as a confidant. No judgment, no bullshit, just boundless competency.
It breaks the spell his appearance cast over me. He’d what? Wave his hands and send a plague of boils on the enemy, a wave of floods to wash them out of the sectors?
But I look at Darrow and I don’t see a savior. I see an exhausted, bearded survivor stumbling home without the ships or the men to turn the tide. He gets back, then what? He’s trapped inside the Gold siege like the rest of us? The tactical risk is just not worth the strategic reward, or cost. We need him on the outside.
Wow
He ignores that and looks at me with so much pain I nearly recant all I’ve said. To travel so far only to be turned away now, not by a scorned god or a twist of fate, but by his wife.
“Virginia, I need you to tell Pax something for me. Tell him…that I am proud of him. That all I’ve done was for him, even if it doesn’t feel like it. I didn’t do it all right. But I think…I believe I did it for the right reasons. Tell him I love him more than my own life. Tell him—” I stop because she is already gone.
Still, the closer we drew to Mars, the more I allowed myself to expect I would hold her in my arms, breathe in the life of her, make so many mistakes right. Not yet, I suppose.
When I’m ready to face reality, I look up into the empty space she had once filled with light.
Unwell
“I’ve never been so far from Io for so long,” she says. “I find myself very homesick. Yet it was Athena who told me there is no home for those born slaves. Only a prison the master tricked you into calling home. The true home for a slave is in dreams. Except on Mars where slaves make dreams real.
“We have Atalantia’s assassin,” Rhone reports. “It was one of the Pink acrobats, I fear.” The one who came down on her silks to offer me a bit of leisure.
Tea
“Ilium is under attack by an Obsidian fleet led by a warlord. One who might be known to you through your intelligence reports. Volsung Fá.”
No waaaay
If we leave, the alliance will break, but we must leave, so you must come with us.
Woah!!!!!!!
They’ll probably tear one another apart before we even reach the Belt.”
Suuuureeee
Now Lysander is sleeping in my old bed on the Morning Star, and I’m sleeping in his bed on the Archimedes. Strange, the twists of fate.
“Shit.” He leans back in his chair. “I wouldn’t want to marry a Sovereign.”
Hahahaha
“I didn’t. I married Virginia, and she married me. The Sovereign and the Reaper, they’re the shadows that come with us.”
In the chaos of the battlefields, I have grown sloppy, my confidence obese from success while my enemies have studied how to beat me and the Willow Way.
I find the lessons in my losses, my grief, and hope I pass those on instead of the pain.
I think Aurae’s strength comes from her response to suffering. Unlike me, she was not given the easy way out. I was carved, given a physical chassis through which I could vent my rage on the worlds. Physically fragile, Aurae had only one choice: make her heart strong, or the worlds would shatter her in every way.
That part disturbs me more than anything else—Fá.
:-)
Sevro does not want to be here. He came along because he had to.
:(
“Abomination.” He turns the cleaver. I scan the wall he’s made his personal armory. So far he’s made a Lysander, a Lilath, an Atlas, and an Apollonius.
I cant wait to see sevro exact his revenge
Instead of looking away, as most do, to preserve his image of the invulnerable Reaper, he admires my imperfections, catalogues the wounds to understand my narrative, and then loves me all the more for them.
Tears fill my eyes, unbidden, unwelcome. Everything in me wishes to harden my heart against the pain. Instead, I allow the pain, and by allowing it I honor the dead with Matteo and feel that their light was seen.
I cry
That solace I thought I’d find in Sevro, I find in Matteo.
Woof
I don’t make a sound but hearing our old friend’s name on Matteo’s lips makes a boy of me again.
He adored you, the boy we helped make a man.
“I’m sure you’ll remind us a few more times,” Sevro says. “When you come down from the cross.”
You know, I once overheard Magnus au Grimmus tell your old companion Roque that losing an army will either make a man a philosopher or a suicide. Glad you chose differently than Fabii.”
Woooooof
