Ember Quartet Quotes

Flesh and bone and blood no longer are my makeup. I’m stacks of naught, packed into my being at the molecular level. My skin, my muscles, my organs, my cunt—cells of non-existence, masquerading as bits of human. Touch me, I’ll feel nothing. Bruise me, fuck me, love me—nothing, nothing, nothing. Everything within me has been altered and adapted. There’s nothing real anymore. Nothing solid. Nothing worthy. Only pieces of limbo. Only nihilism. Only nothing. Nothing wrapped securely around my core, an impenetrable seal. Nothing jammed in all my spaces, crammed in tight, protecting the last embers of a once-blazing heart. I’m barely aware of its beat anymorethrough the layers of vacuity, barely feel the steadiness of its pulse.

I don’t want you to be lonely,” Livvy says. “If we had Mother or Father or even Hannah, it would be different. But, Hel—” “With respect, Empress,” I say quietly. “My name is Blood Shrike.” She sighs, and I attach the mirror, straightening it with a touch. “All done.” I catch my reflection. I appear as I did just a few months ago, on the eve of my graduation. Same body. Same face. Only the eyes are different. I look into the pale gaze of the woman in front of me. For a moment, I see Helene Aquilla. The girl who hoped. The girl who thought the world was fair. But Helene Aquilla is broken. Unmade. Helene Aquilla is dead. The woman in the mirror is not Helene Aquilla. She is the Blood Shrike. The Blood Shrike is not lonely, for the Empire is her mother and her father, her lover and her best friend. She needs nothing else. She needs no one else. She stands apart.

Her body hits the floor with a thud, her eyes still open and shining with tears as blood pours from her neck and into the rug we knotted together last winter.

And still, I run.

My eyes never leaving Cain’s, I drop to my knees, draw my sword, and run the blade across my palm. My blood falls to the dais in a rapid drip. “I, Elias Veturius, swear, by blood and by bone . . .

Elias Veturius, Marcus Farrar, Helene Aquilla, Zacharias Farrar.” He calls our names in the order we’re ranked. “Rise and come forward.

The field of battle is my temple. I mentally chant a saying my grandfather taught me the day he met me, when I was six. He insists it sharpens the mind the way a whetstone sharpens a blade. The swordpoint is my priest. The dance of death is my prayer. The killing blow is my release.

She smiles.

Why are we laughing? I’d asked her at the time. Because laughing makes it hurt less.