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“It is a master’s nature to want, just as it is a servant’s nature to provide. This does not mean the master does not provide. This does not mean a servant does not want.”
As she tries to scream, I wrap Bad Lass around her neck and say: “Your life is in your hands. Don’t drop it.”
“If all lies were so kind, I’d never wish to hear the truth.
“Living isn’t for everyone, I suppose,” I say.
His nose is broken and his right eye blackened. He grins at me as he limps along favoring his ribs. Of course his hair is still coiled and lustrous and he didn’t lose any teeth.
Oh Cassius
They may hate me, but Cassius disgusts them in a way only a man who has worn the Olympic cloak and betrayed it can. Blackcloaks seldom live long or die well.
Sigh
His red eyes are shiny with tears in his grease-dark face. He lowers his forehead to mine and only pulls back when gravity returns.
I'm Gonna cryyyy
The generation that lights the fuse usually gets buried in the rubble.
We achieve perfection first by acknowledging our failures. We increase understanding first by recognizing our ignorance.
“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.
“Mother, your inheritance was guilt. Father’s was surrender. Because of you, because of Father, mine is struggle. That is better than guilt. It is better than surrender. I do not blame you. I thank you. You never pretended the world wasn’t broken, even when a broken world favored you.”
Be wary of tyrants: they will help you today and own you tomorrow.
His eye was on the past and all he’d seen. Mine was on the future and all we yet might.
“Not a loss?” I say and look up at his stony face. “This was supposed to be our staging ground for an Iron Rain next month. The ships. The money. The lives. That moment in Rome. Ajax…Ajax choosing me. Dying for me.” I shudder in horror. “Glirastes. 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.”
Lysander may promise a new age, but he’ll sacrifice a generation to get it.
I force myself every morning and night to visit the wounded. It was Holiday who told me if I forget to feel the cost, I will grow accustomed to it. Like Darrow did.
But no victory is worth a people’s home.
“If we don’t bend, we set ourselves up to break.
Ah how shameless—the way these mortals blame the gods. From us alone, they say, come all their miseries. Yes, but they themselves, with their own reckless ways, compound their pains beyond their proper share. —Homer
I married Virginia, and she married me. The Sovereign and the Reaper, they’re the shadows that come with us.”
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?
“That’s what progress does, you see. It leaps ahead of the past, but we can never outrun the trauma that fixed our course. I will never not be that coward shivering beneath the corpses of my love, my children.
After we flay his toesies, we’ll salt them.
Sevro chill
Honor, if it ever existed, was the first casualty.”
This mission matters because it’s the one we are on.
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.
Periods of trauma are traded for periods of peace. The greater the trauma, the longer the peace.
Vae victis. Woe to the vanquished.
If they are truly my enemies, then why do I want to weep?
Oh Darrow
So much for my authority. How is it easier to control an army of millions than my two best friends?
Golds have different rules for Golds than they do for Reds.”
“He once told me that love which obstructs duty is not love. It is an addiction that must be denied.”
This is our life until we change it.
If we are to be allies in war, we must know we will be peers in peace.”
She knows I’ve not said it all, but Pytha—sweet and dear as she is—accepts the deflection and whispers that it will be all right. It can’t be, I know, because it never was.
We must return to the sun, and the smiles of our mothers. We must have a queen. I tire of kings.”
“I been afraid since I can remember. But I ain’t giving up.”
“You know what they say of you, my kin. The Volk claim you are impure. Unnaturally born. The Ascomanni whisper of your mercies. They think you are weak, with Republic sympathies, and worse. A woman.
Bruh
“You have killed in battle, it is true. But there is another kind of killing. A difficult but necessary kind. The killing of a captive or a foe who is at your mercy. There is no honor in it. That is the point: to take an honorless, necessary action. One that helps your people, but blackens your heart. Your sacrifice to your people is bearing the guilt of what must be done.”
I'm sick
All that prayer calmed the mind, but if I’ve learned anything by now, it’s that only a fool relies on prayer alone.
My mistakes become new opportunities, each flowing together like a drunken dance with Eo on the dirt-packed Laureltide floor.
‘A man thinks he can fly, but he is afraid to jump. A poor friend pushes him from behind. A good friend jumps with.’
I have dedicated my life to the study of social engineering, to the history of humanity, and you tell me that a Red who can’t name five moons of Ilium should have the same say in government? Demokracy gives humanity what it wants, boy. The hierarchy gives humanity what it needs. Structure, and hope to escape our own stupidity.
It’s such a waste. I just got him back.
So pierce brown you fuck. You agree and you still did this
There is something sacred in that, because you all represent a people. People who yearn for something more. For something they’ve never had. Lune, Grimmus, they are trying to reclaim what they have lost: control. There is nothing sacred in that. They do not lead. They pull, they corral, they confine. Their path has only room for one. Your path has room for you all. Remember that, and from this ash freedom will grow.”
But he didn’t need a woman’s love. He needed a brother’s.
His path led back to you, because you made him feel loved.
