51
" I knew it was my duty to my own legend to survive this trial. But I was still crippled by my own devices. Imagine me as a great fully-rigged man-of-war. Four masts, great bulwarks of oak and five score cannon. All my life I have sailed smooth seas and waters that parted for me by virtue of my own splendor. Never tested. Never riled. A tragic existence, if ever there was one. “But at long last: a storm! And when I met it I found my hull . . . rotten. My planks leaking brine, my cannon brittle, powder wet. I foundered upon the storm. Upon you, Darrow of Lykos.” He sighs. “And it was my own fault.” I war between wanting to punch him in the mouth and surrendering into my curiosity by letting him continue. He’s a strange man with a seductive presence. Even as an enemy, his flamboyance fascinated me. Purple capes in battle. A horned Minotaur helmet. Trumpets blaring to signal his advance, as if welcoming all challengers. He even broadcast opera as his men bombarded cities. After so much isolation, he’s delighting in imposing his narrative upon us. “My peril is thus: I am, and always have been, a man of great tastes. In a world replete with temptation, I found my spirit wayward and easy to distract. The idea of prison, that naked, metal world, crushed me. The first year, I was tormented. But then I remembered the voice of a fallen angel. ‘The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, or a hell of heaven.’ I sought to make the deep not just my heaven, but my womb of rebirth. “I dissected the underlying mistakes which led to my incarceration and set upon an internal odyssey to remake myself. But—and you would know this, Reaper—long is the road up out of hell! I made arrangements for supplies. I toiled twenty hours a day. I reread the books of youth with the gravity of age. I perfected my body. My mind. Planks were replaced; new banks of cannon wrought in the fires of solitude. All for the next storm. “Now I see it is upon me and I sail before you the paragon of Apollonius au Valii-Rath. And I ask one question: for what purpose have you pulled me from the deep?” “Bloodyhell, did you memorize that?” Sevro mutters. "
― Pierce Brown , Iron Gold (Red Rising Saga, #4)
53
" Seeing the joy in my wife's face, I am witnessing another miracle. One, for a long time, I believed I would never see again. Love so potent, so whole and true, that it hurts, because even when you convince yourself that it will last forever, you know enough of the world to see how things break and fade, but somehow, some way, you believe this love will be the exception. That it alone will last. "
― Pierce Brown , Iron Gold (Red Rising Saga, #4)
