A Torch Against the Night

"You have taken salt and water at my table, Blood Shrike." The muscles of her hands are rigid as she clenches the edge of the bunk. "I would not insult yout with a lie."
"But you would hide the truth. There`s a difference."

Children are born to break their mothers` hearts, my boy.

Don`t you see? So long as you fight the darkness, you stand in the light.

"Your emotions make you human," Elias says. "Even the unpleasant ones have a purpose. Don`t lock them away. If you ignore them, they just get louder and angrier."

A forced march in bone-numbing sleet simplified life. After three weeks, my world has narrowed to sucking in the next breath, forcing myself to take the next step, finding the will to do it again.

The problem with greedy people, Pop once said to me, is that they think everyone else is as greedy as they are.

I don`t have allies. I have people who owe me things and people who want things and people who use me and people whom I use.

Without Zak beside him, he doesn`t seem fully present -- half a person instead of a whole. He was... younger around Zak. Still cruel, still horrible, but relaxed. Now he seems older and harder and, perhaps most terrifyingly, wiser.

Willpower alone cannot change one`s fate.

Don`t you see what you are doing? The Commandant poisoned you. You, in turn, are a poison. You will poison Laia`s joy, her hope, her life, like you have poisoned all the rest. If you care for her, then do not let her care for you. Like the poison that rages within you, you have no antidote.

He`ll torment himself about those deaths, not seeing them as a necessity but as a choice -- the wrong choice. He`ll keep that blood on his hands long after it would have washed off mine.

Loyal to the end.
The motto of Gens Aquilla, whispered into my ear by my father moments after I was born. I`ve spoken those words a thousand times. I`ve never questioned. Never doubted.
I think of those words now, as I sag between two legionnaires in the dungeons below Blackliff. Loyal to the end.
Loyal to whom? My family? The Empire? My own heart?

My mother hides her anger with practiced cunning. She wraps it in calm and buries it deep. She tramples the soil on top, puts a gravestone on it, and pretends it`s dead.
But I see it in her eyes. Smoldering at the fringes, like the corners of paper blackening just before they burt into flame.
I hate that I share her blood. Would that I could scrub it from my body.

– Почему вы мне это рассказываете? – Я нервно оглянулась вокруг. Ловушка? Обман? Очевидно же, что маска говорит про Элиаса. Но, с какой целью?
– Я не могу сказать тебе, почему, – произнес он почти печально, – но как бы странно это ни звучало, думаю, что именно ты когда-нибудь это поймешь.
Он встряхнулся и взглянул мне в глаза.
– Спаси его, Лайя из Серры, – попросил он. – Судя по тому, что вы с Кровавым Сорокопутом рассказали о нем, он достоин спасения.

Поуп любил говорить, что совместные трудности и несчастья связывают людей, и чувство долга – это больше дар, чем бремя. Сейчас я чувствовала, что мы связаны с Элиасом, и не хотела, чтобы он отгораживался от меня.

– Расскажи мне еще о каком-нибудь воспоминании. О чем-нибудь хорошем.
– Ты, – пробормотал я. – Когда я впервые… впервые увидел тебя. Ты красивая, но на свете полно красивых девушек, и… – Подбери нужное слово. Заставь себя продержаться. – Но не этим ты выделялась. Ты как я…
– Останься со мной, Элиас. Останься здесь.
Губы не слушались. Все ближе и ближе подбиралась мгла.
– Я не могу остаться…
– Пытайся, Элиас. Пытайся!
Ее голос стих. Мир погрузился во тьму