The Obelisk Gate (The Broken Earth, #2)

by N.K. Jemisin

This is just how life is supposed to be: terrible and brief and ending in—if you’re lucky—oblivion.

Of course it doesn’t last. Someone walks into the infirmary and comes over and surprises you by being Ykka.

“No vote,” you say. It’s so quiet that you can hear water trickling out of the pipes in the communal pool, hundreds of feet below. “Leave. Go join Rennanis if they’ll have you. But if you stay, no part of this comm gets to decide that any other part of this comm is expendable. No voting on who gets to be people.”