Light Bringer (Red Rising Saga, #6)

by Pierce Brown

You’re acting like you share a secret language all of a sudden.” “Isn’t that always the case with those who’ve read the same books?”

We achieve perfection first by acknowledging our failures. We increase understanding first by recognizing our ignorance.

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.”

“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?” I shrug. 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.