Battlefield 1 Quotes

But if I'm it, the last of my kind, the last page of human history, like hell I'm going to let the story end this way. I may be the last one, but I am the one still standing. I am the one turning to face the faceless hunter in the woods on an abandoned highway. I am the one not running but facing. Because if I am the last one, then I am humanity. And if this is humanity's last war, then I am the battlefield.

His heart, the war. Her face, the battlefield.

Love and war are two different battlefields.

I am an ant in the battlefield of the gods. There's no room for pride or ego, and barely enough room for survival.

And if humanity is the last war, then I am the battlefield.

I have spent my spare time studying literature popular with young women of this planet. One should always study the battlefield." Sean glanced at him. "And?" "I suggest you give up now. According to my research, in a vampire-werewolf love triangle, the vampire always gets the girl.

See, bad things happen to me on field trips. Like at my fifth-grade school, when we went to the Saratoga battlefield, I had this accident with a Revolutionary War cannon. I wasn't aiming for the school bus, but of course I got expelled anyway. - Percy Jackson

A moment comes in war when the last line must be crossed. The line that separates what you hold dear from what total war demands. If he couldn't cross that line, the battle was over, and he was lost. His heart, the war. Her face, the battlefield. With a cry only he could hear, the hunter turned. And ran.

We're all scarred. That's how we know we've lived a life worth fighting for. Love is a battlefield! Thank you, Pat Benatar!

The kid who didn't go back when he should have and now goes back when he shouldn't. The kid called Zombie, who made a promise, and if he breaks that promise, the war is over - not the big war, but the war that matters, the one in the battlefield of his heart. Because promises matter. They matter now more than ever.

if love is a battlefield, then i must have forgotten all of my armor at home. -a war i never agreed to fight

Because if I am the last one, then I am humanity. And if this is humanity's last war, then I am the battlefield.

There are no heroes on the battlefield, my lady; there are only survivors.

Romance wasn't fair. Nor was it a game. It was war. And, as on any other battlefield, compassion and mercy had no place there.

Don’t call her Sunshine,” he commanded. “Why not?” If Carrion’s plan was to poke the bear, then he sure as hell knew how to go about it. But Kingfisher didn’t respond to the taunting note in his question. He just cocked his head a little, nostrils flaring, and spoke in a low rumble. “Because she is moonlight. The mist that shrouds the mountains. The bite of electricity in the air before a storm. The smoke that rolls across a battlefield before the killing starts. You have no idea what she is. What she could be. You should call her Majesty.

You are a battlefield. Never will there be a greater war than the one you hold with yourself.

Because she is moonlight. The mist that shrouds the mountains. The bite of electricity in the air before a storm. The smoke that rolls across a battlefield before the killing starts. You have no idea what she is. What she could be. You should call her Majesty.

It is important, when killing a nun, to ensure that you bring an army of sufficient bravery. For when Sister Cage of the Sweet Mercy Convent steps onto the battlefield courage is often found to be in short supply.

She's still clinging to the side of her mountain, just like I'm still wandering lost in my battlefield.

I’ve seen what love does. It’s powerful. It’s selfish. It will draw us away from the battlefield, and we can’t allow that.

You believe you are the masters of the world, but your reign as kings and gods is at an end. Until you recognize us as human, as equal, the fight will be at your door. Not on a battlefield but in your cities. In your streets. In your homes. You don't see us, and so we are everywhere. ... And we will rise up, Red as the dawn.

The Morrigan’s ideas of sport and mine varied widely. As a Chooser of the Slain, she tends to enjoy nothing so much as a protracted war. She hangs out with Kali and the Valkyries and they have a death goddesses’ night out on the battlefield.

Taken together, it’s almost a sure sign. The letters float off the page when you read, right? That’s because your mind is hardwired for ancient Greek. And the ADHD-you’re impulsive, can’t sit still in the classroom. That’s your battlefield reflexes. In a real fight, they’d keep you alive. As for the attention problems, that’s because you see too much, Percy, not too little. Your senses are better than a regular mortal’s.

Tis action moves the world....[in] the game of chess, mind that: ye cannot leave your men to stand unmoving on the board and hope to win. A soldier must first step upon the battlefield if does mean to cross it.

Don't you dare die on my watch, Saeris Fane! Fisher will never forgive me if his sole reason for living is torn to pieces on her first fucking battlefield.

It is time for us to fight, and we do so not because we seek the glory of men, but because the other options are worse. We follow the Codes not because they bring gain, but because we loathe the people we would otherwise become. We stand here on this battlefield alone because of who we are. Death is the end of all men! What is the measure of him once he is gone? The wealth he accumulated and left for his heirs to squabble over? The glory he obtained,only to be passed on to those who slew him? The lofty positions he held through happenstance? No. We fight here because we understand. The end is the same. It is the path that separates men. When we taste that end, we will do so with our heads held high, eyes to the sun. I am not ashamed of what I have become. Other men may debase themselves to destroy me. Let them have their glory. For I will retain mine!

How strange, Royce thought, that, after emerging victorious from more than a hundred real battles, the greatest moment of triumph he had ever known had come to him on a mock battlefield where he'd stood alone, unhorsed, and defeated. This morning, his life had seemed as bleak as death. Tonight, he held joy in his arms. Someone or something—fate or fortune or Jenny's God—had looked down upon him this morning and seen his anguish. And, for some reason, Jenny had been given back to him. Closing his eyes, Royce brushed a kiss against her smooth forehead. Thank you, he thought. And in his heart, he could have sworn he heard a voice answer, You're welcome.

Love may be a battlefield, but we’re not doing any wrong. We’re kids in a crowd on the top of the world: high, wild, and innocent.

I hate nice girls. Just exchanging greetings with them will get them on your mind. Start texting each other, and your heart will be set a flutter. If they call you, you're done for. Enjoy staring at your logs and grinning like a fool. However, I won't get fooled again. That's what your kind calls kindness. If you're nice to me, you're nice to others. I always end up nearly forgetting that. Reality is cruel, So I'm sure lies are a form of kindness. Thus, I say kindness itself is also a lie. I always ended up with these expectations. And I always ended up with these misunderstandings. And before I knew it, I stopped hoping. A highly trained loner is once bitten, twice shy. As a veteran on this battlefield of life, I've gotten used to losing. That's why I always hate nice girls. — Hachiman Hikigaya

I dream of a true husband—a good man, not a brute, nor a champion of men on the battlefield; I dream but of a gentle man, one who neither speaks too loud nor ignores evil. I pray for such a like-minded mate, who will be ever for me like harmony to music, virtue to the soul, prosperity to the state, and forethought to the universe.

A battle, as relayed by a poet, is a glorious thing, full of heroic stands, daring charges, and valiant sacrifice. But a battlefield, as experienced by some poor bastard mired in the thick of it, is something different altogether. The word clusterfuck came to mind.

And that is why you will be ruling the country,” I say simply, “while I’ll be fighting on the battlefield, distracting the enemy with my dashing good looks.” “Are you saying I couldn’t distract the enemy with my own dashing good looks?” Kitt asks through his deep laughter, feigning offense. “I’m saying that we are only half brothers, so I’m afraid that means you only have half my charms.

I am the one not running, not staying, but facing. Because if I am the last one, then I am humanity. And if this is humanity's last war, then I am the battlefield.

If truth be told, I ofttimes wonder how Stannis ever got that ugly daughter of his. He goes to his marriage bed like a man marching to a battlefield, with a firm look in his eyes and a determination to do his duty.

Battle was a masculine art. A woman wanting to come to the battlefield was like... well, like a man wanting to read. Unnatural.

Prunella took to the ballrooms of London in the spirit of ruthless calculation of a general entering a battlefield.

Love isn't a smiling bride who holds a colorful bouquet and gazes lovingly at her husband; it's a corpse-littered battlefield where the walking wounded have to keep searching for survivors or die themselves.

Therefore encourage (admonish, exhort) one another and edify (strengthen and build up) one another, just as you are doing. 1 Thessalonians 5:11

It's shame that gets us killed. Shame is the anchor, the heaviest burden to carry from the battlefield. Fortunately shame was an affliction I'd never suffered from.

It seemed trivial. After the battlefield it was going to be difficult to take seriously some of the stuff people worried about in peacetime.

We are the Scarlet Guard and we stand for the freedom and equality of all people, starting with the Reds. You believe you are the masters of the world, but your reign as kings and gods is at and end. Until you recognize us as human as equal, the fight will be at your door. Not on a battlefield but in your cities. In your streets, In your homes. You don't see us, and so we are everywhere. And we will rise up, Red as the dawn.

THE IMPORTANCE OF lethal microbes in human history is well illustrated by Europeans’ conquest and depopulation of the New World. Far more Native Americans died in bed from Eurasian germs than on the battlefield from European guns and swords. Those germs undermined Indian resistance by killing most Indians and their leaders and by sapping the survivors’ morale.

All events, no matter how earth-shaking or bizarre, are diluted within moments of their occurrence by the continuance of the necessary routines of day-to-day living. Men walking a battlefield to search for wounded among the dead will still stop to cough, to blow their noses, still lift their eyes to watch a V of geese in flight. I have seen farmers continue their ploughing and planting, heedless of armies clashing but a few miles away.

He'd felt God's gentle urging in his life before, but never had it been so overt. It was as if a general had ridden onto the battlefield to direct the operation himself instead of leaving it in the hands of his officers.

You find me ugly, don’t you?” Brishen had faced abominations on the battlefield without flinching, leapt into the thick of the fighting against creatures born from the nightmares of lesser demons. Not once had he been tempted to run away in fear. Now, his leg muscles rippled with the urge to flee. He clenched his teeth instead, prayed he wouldn’t start a war with their newest ally and answered honestly. “Hideous,” he said. “A hag of a woman.

There is no place for innocence on the battlefield.

A purple sash crosses his doublet, pinned to his chest by a dozen medals he's never won from a hundred battlefields he's never stepped foot on.

Listen carefully Brystal, because this is the most important lesson I will ever teach you," she said. "Don't make the same mistakes I made. No matter how cruel or unfair the world becomes, never forfeit your happiness. And no matter how poorly someone treats you, never let anyone's hate rob you of compassion. The battle of good and evil isn't fought on a battlefield - it begins in each and every one of us. Don't let your anger choose sides for you.

Ser Barristan Selmy raised his pale blue from the table and said, ''Your Grace, ther is honor in facing an enemy on the battlefield, but none in killing him in his mother's womb. Forgive me, but I must stannd with Lord Eddard.

We like everything instantaneous. We have the fruit of patience inside, but it is being worked to the outside. Sometimes God takes His time about bringing us our full deliverance. He uses the difficult period of waiting to stretch our faith and to let patience have her perfect work (see James 1:4 KJV). God’s timing is perfect. He is never late.

There are wolves in the night. The soldiers would say that, when I was a girl. My uncles and brothers in war. My friends. Raising me on the battlefield because there was no where else to go. There are wolves, they would say. And there are stories about wolves and girls. Girls in red. All alone in the woods. About to get eaten up. Wolves and girls. Both have sharp teeth.

You saw it too, didn’t you?” I stopped, but I didn’t look back. “Last night,” he said, “right before the roof collapsed. The vision. The battlefield.” I couldn’t move, my body paralyzed, my thoughts stunned to stillness. “What if our story isn’t over, Diem Bellator? What if it’s only beginning?

Note savages, eh? They live in mountain caves and dress like wild men. They walk about in woolen petticoats, which they are not in the least modest about casting aside when they need their sword arms free. Dash me, can you even begin to imagine the sight of a horde of naked, hairy-legged creatures charging at you across a battlefield like bloody fiends out of hell—screaming and flailing those great bloody swords and axes of theirs like scythes? Not savages?

If love is a battlefield and we all get scars....These were my reminders…my necessary thorns.

The noble heart will find no shortage of places to offer itself in martyrdom, but you cannot die on every battlefield.” ~ Duncan Sinclair, from The Outcast Highlander

Memory flashed, of a blue dress and a face glancing up at him, and eagerness and trepidation exchanged blows on the battlefield of his heart

Malcolm looked like the perfect battlefield commander, except for the fact that he'd forgotten his pants. His red briefs made quite a statement with his sword and leather cuirass.

Love is a battlefield And I think I fucking died.

I wish the enemy would hesitate to shoot when they see me, but you can't expect humanitarianism on the battlefield.

And I suppose I might have grown up better, might have become a proper house girl or even taken Aunt Aggie's place as House Negro. I might have been a good girl if it had been in the cards. But all of that was dashed to hell two days after I was born, when the dead rose up and started to walk on a battlefield in a small town in Pennsylvania called Gettysburg.

I may be the last one, but I am the one still standing. I am the one turning to face the faceless hunter in the woods on an abandoned highway. I am the one not running, not staying, but facing. Because if I am the last one, then I am humanity. And if this is humanity’s last war, then I am the battlefield.

So get rid of all uncleanness and the rampant outgrowth of wickedness, and in a humble (gentle, modest) spirit receive and welcome the Word which implanted and rooted [in your hearts] contains the power to save your souls. James 1:21

It must be terrible to be old, when you love someone who died young. They never change in your mind, and every day you see yourself grow away from that person you were when you loved and knew them. Until you are more of a shadow than they are, and the girl you were is altogether gone, more dead even than that young man on the battlefield.

Humans had a genius for devising instruments of death. Their lives were so short and they seemed to value them so little, sending waves of men to clash in battlefields, then weighing victory by the piled corpses. And if they held their own lives so worthless, the lives of everything else were as fruit to pluck from trees.

means of escape to a landing place), that you may be capable and strong and powerful to bear up under it patiently. 1 Corinthians 10:13

What honor can we find on a battlefield while our people starve?

Anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war.’1 Chancellor Otto von Bismarck

If love is a battlefield, then I must have forgotten all of my armor at home. - a war I never agreed to fight.

That’s how you fight wars, after all—with soldiers who are more afraid of stepping out of line than they are of dying on the battlefield.

Love is a battlefield, and my knight is a villain.

He skidded to a dead halt and stared hard at Austin. The boy’s chin carried so many nicks from his first shave that it was a wonder he hadn’t bled to death. He was a year older than Houston had been when he’d last stood on a battlefield. Sweet Lord, Houston had never had the opportunity to shave his whole face; he’d never flirted with girls, wooed women, or danced through the night. He’d never loved. Not until Amelia. And he’d given her up because he’d thought it was best for her. Because he had nothing to offer her but a one-roomed log cabin, a few horses, a dream so small that it wouldn’t cover the palm of her hand. And his heart. His wounded heart.

Is it the nature of the world that all things seek a rhythm, and in that rhythm a sort of peace? Certainly it has always seemed so to me. All events, no matter how earthshaking or bizarre, are diluted within moments of their occurrence by the continuance of the necessary routines of day-to-day living. Men waling a battlefield to search for wounded among the dead will still stop to cough, to blow their noses, still lift their eyes to watch a V of geese in flight. I have seen farmers continue their plowing and planting, heedless of armies clashing but a few miles away.

I may be the last one, but I am the one still standing. I am the one turning to face the faceless hunter in the woods on an abandoned highway. I am the one not running, not staying, but facing. Because if I am the last one, then I am humanity. And if this is humanity's last war, then I am the battlefield

I will teach you to love death. I will empty you of grief and guilt and self-pity and fill you up with hate and cunning and the spirit of vengeance. I will make my final stand here, Benjamin Thomas Parish." Slapping my chest over and over until my skin burns, my heart on fire. "And you will be my battlefield.

For a split second I wonder what I am doing here on this battlefield, on the front line. I am a princess. I am soft and regal. I am quiet, forgotten Sorrowlynn, who never leaves her rooms. And yet I am so much more. I have the capacity to be anything. To be everything! This girl running to fight for the greater good is me. For the first time ever, I feel like I am living the life I was meant to be living all along.

...who made a promise, and if he breaks that promise, the war is over--not the big war, but the war that matters, the one in the battlefield of his heart. Because promises matter. They matter now more than ever.

The death of this honorable man upon this battlefield leaves all of us the poorer for his loss, yet so much the richer for the friendship and love and loyalty with which he gifted us in life. May his spirit speed unhindered to the other side to join those already there and to await us until we join him in our own times.

Women died in childbirth, just as men did on the battlefield, and in both cases it was easier to convince the young and foolhardy to do it, to use them up before they were so old that their bodies refused to do what was necessary.

Therefore, [there is] now no condemnation… for those who are in Christ Jesus, who live [and] walk not after the dictates of the flesh, but after the dictates of the Spirit. Romans 8:1

A moment comes in war when the last line must be crossed. The line that separates what you hold dear from what total war demands. If he couldn’t cross that line, the battle was over, and he was lost. His heart, the war. Her face, the battlefield.

So, our weapons are the Word used in various ways. We can pray the word, speak the word, sing the word, and study the word. As Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians, our weapons are not carnal (fleshly) weapons; they are spiritual. We need spiritual weapons because we are fighting master spirits, yes, even the devil himself. Even Jesus used the weapon of the Word in the wilderness to defeat the devil. (See Luke 4:1-13.) Each time the devil lied to Him, Jesus responded with, “It is written,” and quoted him the Word.

Her unique observations are about how the war impacted people—from the thrill-seekers going to battlefields for fun, to the nurses working among the wounded in darkness, and London society women venturing into foreign lands to work near dangerous enemy lines.

Men walking a battlefield to search for wounded among the dead will still stop to cough, to blow their noses, still lift their eyes to watch a V of geese in flight. I have seen farmers continue their plowing and planting, heedless of armies clashing but a few miles away.

Once my father said that conflicts are between rulers. Those that follow rulers can be perfectly nice, which is how you wind up with two perfectly nice people with daggers to each other's throats. Hyacinthe and I might have been friends, but for the part where we were set on opposite sides of a battlefield.

why half the schools in your country are not allowed to teach evolution. Ask yourself why the U.S. Christian Coalition is the most influential lobby against scientific progress in the world. The battle between science and religion is still raging, Mr. Langdon. It has moved from the battlefields to the boardrooms, but it is still raging.

An up-front enemy is rare now and is actually a blessing. People hardly ever attack you openly anymore, showing their intentions, their desire to destroy you; instead they are political and indirect. Although the world is more competitive than ever, outward aggression is discouraged, so people have learned to go underground, to attack unpredictably and craftily. Many use friendship as a way to mask aggressive desires: they come close to you to do more harm. (A friend knows best how to hurt you.) Or, without actually being friends, they offer assistance and alliance: they may seem supportive, but in the end they’re advancing their own interests at your expense. Then there are those who master moral warfare, playing the victim, making you feel guilty for something unspecified you’ve done. The battlefield is full of these warriors, slippery, evasive, and clever.

For who has known or understood the mind (the counsels and purposes) of the Lord so as to guide and instruct Him and give Him knowledge? But we have the mind of Christ (the Messiah) and do hold the thoughts (feelings and purposes) of His heart. 1 CORINTHIANS 2:16

Feet scraped inside-out next to unblemished boots. Black-and-gold Kel uniforms braided into cracked rib cages. Gape-jawed, twisted skulls with eye sockets staring out their sides and strands of tendon knotted through crumbling teeth. A book of profanities written in every futile shade of red the human body had ever devised, its pages upended over the battlefield from horizon to horizon.

She swung her fist at Nicolae’s head. He raised an arm to block the blow, and she delivered a killing stab with her wooden dagger. Nicolae laughed, staggering dramatically to the ground. “Dead, again, at the hands of the ugliest girl in creation.” He stuck out his tongue, face contorted in a grimace. Lada kicked him in the stomach. “I am no girl. Who is next?” The other Janissaries, gathered in a loose circle around Lada and Nicolae, shuffled their feet and avoided eye contact. Nicolae pushed himself up on an elbow. “Really? Cowards!” “I still have bruises from the last time.” “I cannot sit without pain.” “She fights dirty.” Ivan did not even respond, having never forgiven Lada for besting him when they were introduced. He refused to fight her and rarely acknowledged her presence. Lada laughed, showing all her sharp teeth. “Because when you are on the battlefield, honor will mean so much. You will die with a blade between your ribs, secure in the knowledge that you fought with manners.” She picked up her dull practice sword, abandoned on the edge of the circle, and swung it through the air, sweeping it across the line of the Janissaries’ collective throats.

I regard him anew, at last seeing him for what he is. “If you could just be who you are in here”—I place my palm over his heart—“instead of who they made you, then you would be a great Emperor.” I feel his pulse thud against my fingers. “But they won’t let you, will they? They won’t let you have compassion or kindness. They won’t let you keep your soul.” “My soul’s gone.” He looks away. “I killed it dead on that battlefield yesterday.” I think of Spiro Teluman then. Of what he said to me the last time I saw him. “There are two kinds of guilt,” I say softly. “The kind that’s a burden and the kind that gives you purpose. Let your guilt be your fuel. Let it remind you of who you want to be. Draw a line in your mind. Never cross it again. You have a soul. It’s damaged, but it’s there. Don’t let them take it from you, Elias.” His eyes meet mine when I say his name, and I reach up a hand to touch his mask. It is smooth and warm, like rock polished by water and then left to heat in the sun. I let my arm fall. Then I leave his room and walk to the doors of the barracks and out into the rising sun.

The ancient, animal story, the same whether it was on a spinning rock surrounded by hard vacuum or the stamp-sized chimpanzee preserves on Earth. Even in the Belt, youth brought invulnerability, immortality, the unshakable conviction that for you, things would be different. The laws of physics would cut you a break, the missiles would never hit, the air would never hiss out into nothing. Maybe for other people—the patched-together fighting ships of the OPA, the water haulers, the Martian gunships, the Scopuli, the Canterbury, the Donnager, the hundred other ships that had died in small actions since the system had turned itself into a battlefield—but not you.

A King Marches in Loneliness." A king is always lonely. When others are laughing with friends to show off their humor, He is sweating in silence. The king is always lonely, When others are chasing fair maidens, He is bleeding on the battlefield. A king is always lonely. When the whole world is against him, He stared into the front. A king is always lonely. When he is abandoned by all, He is still firmly marching forward, Only to realize his dreams afar.

I’ll tell you a story. There was once a badly wounded man lying on the battle-field waiting for the surgeon to dress his wound, which was covered with flies. A lightly wounded comrade saw the flies and was going to drive them away. ‘Oh, no,’ cried the wounded man, ‘don’t do that! These flies are almost gorged with my blood now and aren’t hurting me nearly so much as they did at first: if you drive them away their place will be taken at once by hungrier ones, and that will be the end of me.

freedom is not less endangered if attacked in the name of anti-Fascism than in that of outright Fascism.1 This truth has been so forcefully formulated by John Dewey that I express the thought in his words: “The serious threat to our democracy,” he says, “is not the existence of foreign totalitarian states. It is the existence within our own personal attitudes and within our own institutions of conditions which have given a victory to external authority, discipline, uniformity and dependence upon The Leader in foreign countries. The battlefield is also accordingly here—within ourselves and our institutions.

I am a Roman,' he said to the king; 'my name is Gaius Mucius. I came here to kill you - my enemy. I have as much courage to die as to kill. It is our Roman way to do and to suffer bravely. Nor am I alone in my resolve against your life; behind me is a long line of men eager for the same honor. Brace yourself, if you will, for the struggle - a struggle for your life from hour to hour, with an armed enemy always at your door. That is the war we declare against you: you need fear no action in the battlefield, army against army; it will be fought against you alone, by one of us at a time.' Porsena in rage and alarm ordered the prisoner to be burnt alive unless he at once divulged the plot thus obscurely hinted at, whereupon Mucius, crying: 'See how cheap men hold their bodies when they care only for honor!' thrust his right hand into the fire which had been kindled for a sacrifice, and let it burn there as if he were unconscious of the pain. Porsena was so astonished by the young man's almost superhuman endurance that he leapt to his feet and ordered his guards to drag him from the altar. 'Go free,' he said; 'you have dared to be a worse enemy to yourself than to me. I should bless your courage, if it lay with my country to dispose of it. But, as that cannot be, I, as an honorable enemy, grant you pardon, life, and liberty.' 'Since you respect courage,' Mucius replied, as if he were thanking him for his generosity, 'I will tell you in gratitude what you could not force from me by threats. There are three hundred of us in Rome, all young like myself, and all of noble blood, who have sworn an attempt upon your life in this fashion. It was I who drew the first lot; the rest will follow, each in his turn and time, until fortune favor us and we have got you.' The release of Mucius (who was afterwards known as Scaevola, or the Left-Handed Man, from the loss of his right hand) was quickly followed by the arrival in Rome of envoys from Porsena. The first attempt upon his life, foiled only by a lucky mistake, and the prospect of having to face the same thing again from every one of the remaining conspirators, had so shaken the king that he was coming forward with proposals for peace.

The politicians were in full bay, particularly those of his own party who had been urging, without success, his support of antislavery legislation which he feared would lose him the border states, held to the Union so far by his promise that no such laws would be passed. It also seemed to these Republicans that entirely too many Democrats were seated in high places, specifically in the cabinet and the army; and now their anger was increased by apprehension. About to open their campaigns for reëlection in November, they had counted on battlefield victories to increase their prospects for victory at the polls. Instead, the main eastern army, under the Democrat McClellan—“McNapoleon,” they called him—had held back, as if on purpose, and then retreated to the James, complaining within hearing of the voters that the Administration was to blame. Privately, many of the Jacobins agreed with the charge, though for different reasons, the main one being that Lincoln, irresolute by nature, had surrounded himself with weak-spined members of the opposition party. Fessenden of Maine put it plainest: “The simple truth is, there was never such a shambling half-and-half set of incapables collected in one government since the world began.

I can trust you.” “How do you know?” she says again. This is when I kiss her. I cannot give her the haemanthus. That is my heart, and it is of Mars—one of the only things born from the red soil. And it is still Eo’s. But this girl, when they took her … I would have done anything to see her smirking again. Perhaps one day I’ll have two hearts to give. She tastes how she smells. Smoke and hunger. We do not pull apart. My fingers wend through her hair. Hers trace along my jaw, my neck, and scrape along the back of my scalp. There is a bed. There is time. And there’s a hunger different from when I first kissed Eo. But I remember when the Gamma Helldiver, Dago, took a deep pull from his burner, turning it bright but dead in a few quick moments. He said, This is you. I know I am impetuous. Rash. I process that. And I am full of many things—passion, regret, guilt, sorrow, longing, rage. At times they rule me, but not now. Not here. I wound up hanging on a scaffold because of my passion and sorrow. I ended up in the mud because of my guilt. I would have killed Augustus at first sight because of my rage. But now I am here. I know nothing of the Institute’s history. But I know I have taken what no one else has taken. I took it with anger and cunning, with passion and rage. I won’t take Mustang the same way. Love and war are two different battlefields. So despite the hunger, I pull away from Mustang. Without a word, she knows my mind, and that’s how I know it’s in the right. She darts one more kiss into me. It lingers longer than it should, and then we stand together and leave.

As we flew inland from the coast at about 1,200 feet I looked down to see a strange countryside. What I saw wasn't just a western European landscape, but ravaged terrain. The vegetation cover was so sparse a looked a somewhat burgundy tinge- mud oozing from the turf. I'd never seen anything lke it. It was quite surreal. For a few miles along the flight path and stretching towards the French coast on the Channel, as far as the eye could see, were hundreds of thousands of crater rings. There were so many it appeared almost incomprehensible. Yet, there they were, sullen on the surface of this ravaged landscape. We had heard of no heavy artillery attacks in this area, certainly nothing of this concentration of fury. Then it dawned on us quietly that we were flying over the World War 1 battlefields. It was a sobering sight, which filled us with melancholy for the suffering which must have gone on down there. Yet here we were 26 years after that last war ended, going to fight the same enemy. It took some time to come back to reality." Sergeant Dan Hartigan, 1st Canadian Parachute Regiment

In 1846 Easter fell on the same date in the Latin and Greek Orthodox calendars, so the holy shrines were much more crowded than usual, and the mood was very tense. The two religious communities had long been arguing about who should have first right to carry out their Good Friday rituals on the altar of Calvary inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the spot where the cross of Jesus was supposed to have been inserted in the rock. During recent years the rivalry between the Latins and the Greeks had reached such fever pitch that Mehmet Pasha, the Ottoman governor of Jerusalem, had been forced to position soldiers inside and outside the church to preserve order. But even this had not prevented fights from breaking out. On this Good Friday the Latin priests arrived with their white linen altar-cloth to find that the Greeks had got there first with their silk embroidered cloth. The Catholics demanded to see the Greeks’ firman, their decree from the Sultan in Constantinople, empowering them to place their silk cloth on the altar first. The Greeks demanded to see the Latins’ firman allowing them to remove it. A fight broke out between the priests, who were quickly joined by monks and pilgrims on either side. Soon the whole church was a battlefield. The rival groups of worshippers fought not only with their fists, but with crucifixes, candlesticks, chalices, lamps and incense-burners, and even bits of wood which they tore from the sacred shrines. The fighting continued with knives and pistols smuggled into the Holy Sepulchre by worshippers of either side. By the time the church was cleared by Mehmet Pasha’s guards, more than forty people lay dead on the floor.1

They’re all okay, then?” I grin like an idiot. What is wrong with me? She rises from her chair, fluid and vaguely shimmering. Her grace is legendary. I’m agile and strong, but I’d rather move like sunbeams on water, like Selena. “In good health and arguing incessantly with Desma and Aetos. Those two are under the impression the Sintans abducted you.” She’s asking a question. I owe her an answer. “They did. Sort of.” Her sculpted lips purse. “Help me understand a ‘sort of’ abduction,” Selena says, pouring me a cup of water. Well, it sounds stupid when you say it like that. My throat is parched, so I drink before answering. “He’s Beta Sinta. He said he’d have you all arrested if I didn’t come.” “And you believed him?” It’s a loaded question coming from Selena. I nod. After nearly a month with him, I also know he would have done it because he felt he had to, not because he wanted to. “He needs a powerful Magoi to help him and his precious Alpha sister, Egeria.” Egeria is no Alpha. She sounds more like a buttercup. Beta Sinta on the other hand, he’s Alpha material. Fierce on the battlefield, bloody, focused, ruthless…fair? “Plus, he had a magic rope.” Selena laughs, and the sound is like wind chimes on a spring breeze. “You? Caught by a magic rope?” I flush. “Don’t remind me.” She clears her throat, taming more laughter, and asks, “Will you help him?” Selena may not know who I am, but I’m certain she knows what I am—the Kingmaker—even if we’ve never discussed it. “My abilities can be valuable in diplomatic situations,” I say carefully. “He came here to save you. He looked like he cared.” I shrug, glancing down. “I’m a weapon he doesn’t want to lose.” “I think there’s more.” My eyes snap back up. “Don’t infer something that isn’t there. We’re both monsters.” Her dark-blue gaze flicks over me, unnerving. “Monsters still mate.” I choke on my own spit and then cough. A faint smile curves her lips. “Why didn’t you just escape?” “The rope.” That stupid, infuriating enchanted rope that led me to make a binding vow to stay with Beta Sinta until his—or my, if it comes first—dying day. She looks incredulous. “You couldn’t find a way out?” “It was a bloody good rope!