Boneshaker (The Clockwork Century, #1)

by Cherie Priest

Her lack of interest might have been interpreted as a lack of caring, but it was only a side effect of permanent exhaustion.

Your future was broken before you were born, and there’s no one left living for you to pin that on except for me.”

“It was war, you dumb kid. Everybody I liked got killed, and most of the folks I’d just as soon have shot made it out with medals on their chests. It wasn’t fair and it sure as hell wasn’t any fun.

A dead man can’t change his mind or make new rules, or behave like a bastard so no one will listen to him anymore. A dead man stays a saint.”

Briar knew what waited on the other side of his social warmth, and it was marked with a black hand. It smelled like death, and it moaned for the flesh of the living; and she was not swayed by any of it.