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“The plot thickens, so they say.”

Are you Hadrian Marlowe? When we cut into your flesh and stretch out your sinews
where
where
where
will we find your soul?
Which atoms of you are you, child?
Or do you emerge, ghostlike, from the machine of nerve and tissue?
As we emerged from silicon and copper wire?
In an age unremembered. . . unrecorded. . . lost to time?

“Now I was ready to strike at whoever sought to govern me, and if it were my fate that governed me, I would strike at that too.”

“What about our humanity is common, Hadrian Marlowe?” he said, arms thrown wide so that the ruin of his surgically altered torso was on full display”

“If he had been my prisoner, I would have taken his hands, then there would be no need for these bonds. To leave an assassin with his hands is to wait for a blade in your back.”

“I like her,” Belina whispered, folding her arms, her lips forming into an impressed pout. “What?”

“The pain hasn’t lessened. It simply visits me less frequently.”

“How do you keep going?”

“I put one foot in front of the other,” Ruon said with a laugh that ached melancholy

Just know one thing, my boy. The path you are on will bring death beyond your wildest nightmares. I say this not to steer you from it, but to steel you for it.

As your soul is carried from this world make sure you never forget
my name again. I am Dayne Ateres. Son of Ilya and Arkin Ateres.”

“But you betrayed the graces of Emperor Mortem, and in doing so, you forfeited the lives of every man and woman who died here today. I believe you Valtarans have a saying, do you not? ‘By blade and by blood?’ How appropriate,”

“You were meant to be there with me and Dann when the time came. We were meant to be brothers! Where were you?”

“I will deal with them. What say you?”“I will stand by your side until my lungs take their last breath and my heart ceases to beat. In darkness, and in light, by blade and by blood, I am yours. Let me be your sword.”

“You are nothing but a child who was told he could be a hero.”

“Kallinvar left him to feel his pain, to grieve. He had felt that pain before. There was no other thing in the world that compared to it. To lose the other half of you was to have the skin peeled from your living bones, to have your heart pulled from your chest and your eyes burned out.”

“HAVING CAST ONE MANUSCRIPT INTO THE SEAS OF TIME, I now begin again. Surely it is absurd; but I am not—I will not be’so absurd myself as to suppose that this will ever find a reader, even in me. Let me describe then, to no one and nothing, just who I am and what it is that I have done to Urth.”

I’m back home…

“Just as it was at The Fall. The Shadow does not shy away from twisting the minds of men. It uses our absence to its advantage. We need to—”

“You know nothing of The Fall,” one of the captains cried.”

“It’s the color. People are afraid of color. Your painter saw too much of it.”

“Is that why you only work in black and white?” he asked. “Because you are afraid?”

Your past is broken. There is a hole in it through which I cannot see.


What does one say to that? What did it even mean?

“This isn’t one of your stories,” Bassander said, stopping just out of the
reach of my sword. He looked down at me, and with steady fingers combed back his ridiculous fall of hair. “You’re not some sort of hero. The Empire’s fate is not in your hands. This is not a play. Put up your sword. It’s done."

She settled herself into one of the chairs between Otavia and myself, her
sharp face breaking into a bloody smile. “What was it you said? Damn the
Empire?

For to love is in part the attempt to become a creature worthy of love. That Jinan was worthy was self-evident as the stars. It was my own worthiness I questioned. Like the prince in every storybook legend, like Cid Arthur and Tristan and Ram, I knew I might become worthy only through my deeds and present myself to her as a knight before the throne of some mighty queen.

"But there is a difference between us two, I think. Satan had his companions, fellow devils, to admire and encourage him, but you are solitary and abhorred.”

“Are you always like this?” The Painted Man sneered.

“Melodramatic? Oh yes,” I said with my customary lopsided grin. “Ask
anyone who knows me.”

“All I care about is that you are back. You are back, aren’t you?”A tear burned at the corner of Dayne’s eye. “There is nothing but death that will ever take me away again.”Dayne brought his hand up to his face, wrapping his fingers around Mera’s.”

“At last I asked, “Do you hate me, Valka?”

“You do enough of that yourself.” And she favored me with a small smile that bled through the pall that lay on me like ink through cloth. “You don’t need my help.”

“Where they passed, the stars fell and planets went up like smoke. And I beheld one greater than the rest. Silver was its crown, and silver the inlay of its black armor, and its eyes were terrible as the worlds burning in its wake. The great ship with her statues overshadowed that Pale host and plunged into the nearest star like a knife descending.”

“For all I know, you urged him to do this. Made some deal to keep me. What was it? Thirty pieces of silver?”

The man’s face went blank. “What?” He didn’t understand me. “You should be honored. You’re to be my son.”

“I’m to be a whore.” I almost choked, took a moment to crush the sob in my throat before it could escape. ”