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His name is Darrow, I think. Because the Reaper is not mine. He’s not the man I love. Darrow is. Endure, I once told him. Yet it is I who must endure. Reaper. Reaper. It never stops. They mean well, and the Reaper’s name feeds them power. But they shout for the god while I carry a hollowness inside me the size of the man.
“Worry is a spiral with death at its center, Cassius,” I reply. I feel Aurae smiling. Cassius rolls his eyes. “Worry is a spiral with…I mean, come on. You trying to outdo Stoneside?”
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.
“He was born a leper amongst the downtrodden and rose to become a prince of men. He was virtuous and true, the way men should be. He was stubborn, sometimes naïve, but never stupid. He adored you, the boy we helped make a man. And he adored the man too, even if he had to stand in your way sometimes.”
I thought I was done with disillusionment when I sat down with Apollonius in the Graveyard of Tyrants. I told myself I could play the game by Atalantia’s rules. Then in Diomedes, in the Rim, I saw a way to win that seemed moral. In that moment in Rome, I conjured an illusion. And now, in the shattered remains of that illusion, I feel like a player in a production I thought was a drama discovering the audience bought tickets to a comedy.
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.
The Moon Lords are naïve as well, because they think Lysander came to them in earnest to win their approval. As if their approval means shit to a man with a MoonBreaker. None of them yet understand that Lysander was just covering his ass before committing a war crime.
“It wasn’t me that did it. I liked him very much. In another life, I might have loved him. But he didn’t need a woman’s love. He needed a brother’s. The way he talked about you. Well…” Her eyes swim
