Red Rising Eo Quotes

I live for the dream that my children will be born free. That they will be what they like. That they will own the land their father gave them.' 'I live for you,' I say sadly. She kisses my cheek. 'Then you must live for more.

Break the chains, my love.

I am no martyr. I am not vengeance. I am Eo's dream.

All wounds heal. Even these." "That's a lie." I tell him. I'll never be healed of Eo. That pain will last forever. "Some things do not fade. Some things can never be made right.

If you're watching, Eo, it's time to close your eyes. The Reaper has come. And he's brought hell with him.

I will give Eo your love. I will make a house for you in the Vale of your fathers. It will be beside my own. Join me there when you die.” He grins. “But I am no builder. So take your time. We will wait.

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.

... You have to pull the feet to break the neck. They let the loved ones do it.

But I cannot think only of the Red girl. When I see the moon, I think of the sun: Mustang burns in my thoughts. If Eo smelled of rust and soil, then the Golden girl is fire and autumn leaves.

There is no morality to him. No goodness. No evil intent when he killed Eo. He believes he is beyond morality. His aspirations are so grand that he has become inhuman in his desperate desire to preserve humanity.

I can be a builder, not just a destroyer. Eo and Fitchner saw that when I could not. They believed in me. So whether they wait for me in the Vale or not, I feel them in my heart, I hear their echo beating across the worlds. I see them in my son, and, when he is old enough, I will take him on my knee and his mother and I will tell him of the rage of Ares, the strength of Ragnar, the honor of Cassius, the love of Sevro, the loyalty of Victra, and the dream of Eo, the girl who inspired me to live for more.

You're of use because you're more than a weapon. When your wife died, she didn't just give you a vendetta. She gave you her dream. You're its keeper. Its maker. So don't be spitting anger and hate. You're not fighting against them, no matter what Harmony says. You're fighting for Eo's dream, for your family that is still alive, your people.

I look down at my hands. They are what Dancer called them - cut, scarred, burned things. When Eo kissed them, they grew gentle for love. Now that she is gone, they grown hard for hate.

Sharing a life threads more than flesh and blood together. It weaves her memories in and around and through mine. The more I know of her, the more I share of her, the more I love her in a way the boy I used to be never knew how to love. Eo was a flame, dancing against the wind. I tried to catch her. Tried to hold her. But she was never meant to be held. My wife is not as fickle as a flame. She is an ocean. I knew from the first that I cannot own her, cannot tame her, but I am the only storm that moves her depths and stirs her tides. And that is more than enough.

She will not come back, but her beauty, her voice, will echo until the end of time. She believed in something beyond herself, and her death gave her voice power it didn’t have in life. She was pure, like your father. We, you and I” — he touches my chest with the back of his index finger — “are dirty. We are made for blood. Rough hands. Dirty hearts. We are lesser creatures in the grand scheme of things, but without us men of war, no one except those of Lykos would hear Eo’s song. Without our rough hands, the dreams of the pure hearts would never be built.

Eo didn't deserve to die a slave to the Society. And despite her Color, Mustang doesn't deserve any sort of bridle.

I let my hands fall to the bed. Her mouth crafts a warm path to mine. There we share the taste of my tears as her top lip slides between my own and her tongue warms the inside of my mouth. Her hand slides up my neck, nails grazing the skin, till she finds purchase in my hair, tugging slightly at the tangle. Shivers lance my body. Gone is any semblance of resistance. All the guilt that kept me from betraying Eo with Mustang is swept away in the chaos inside me. All the guilt I have for knowing she is a Gold and I am a Red vanishes. I'm a man, and she's the woman I want.

Eo said people would always look to me. She believed I had some quality, some essence that gave hope. I rarely feel it in myself.

If you're watching, Eo, it's time to close your eyes.

... Anyway, you put too much stock in hierarchy and fear.” “Me?” “Who else? I could spot it a mile away. All you cared about was your mission, whatever it is. You’re like a driven arrow with a very depressing shadow. First time I met you, I knew you’d cut my throat to get whatever it is you want.” She waits for a moment. “What is it that you want, by the way?” “To win,” I say. “Oh, please. You’re not that simple.” “You think you know me?” The rabbit hisses out fat over the fire. “I know you cry in your sleep for a girl named Eo. Sister? Or a girl you loved? It is a very offColor name. Like yours.” “I’m a farplanet hayseed. Didn’t they tell you?” “They wouldn’t tell me anything. I don’t get out much.” She waves a hand. “Anyway, doesn’t matter. All that matters is that no one trusts you because it’s obvious you care more about your goal than you do about them.” “And you’re something different?” “Oh, very much so, Sir Reaper. I like people more than you do. You are the wolf that howls and bites. I am the mustang that nuzzles the hand. People know they can work with me. With you? Hell, kill or be killed.

I don’t want to do this. I can’t explain how badly I don’t want to hurt Julian. But when has what I wanted ever mattered? My people need this. Eo sacrificed happiness and her life. I can sacrifice my wants. I can sacrifice this slender princeling. I can even sacrifice my soul. I make the first move toward Julian. “Darrow …,” he murmurs. Darrow was kind in Lykos. I am not. I hate myself for it. I think I’m crying, because my vision is unclear.

It fills me with a strange emptiness knowing that I was enough for her when I was never enough for Eo.

Mustang’s strategy is Eo’s dream.

I find her asleep in a suite beside Jupiter’s own. Her golden hair is wild. Her cloak dirtier than my own. It hangs brown and gray, not white. She smells like smoke and hunger. She’s destroyed the room, upturned a dish of food, buried her dagger into the door. The Brown and Pink servants are scared of her, and me. I watch them skitter away. My distant cousins. I see them move, alien things. Like ants. So void of emotion. I feel a pang. Perspective is a wicked creature. This is how Augustus saw Eo as he killed her. An ant. No. He called her a “Red bitch.” She was like a dog in his eyes.

Were I still the man Eo knew, I would have stood frozen in horror. But that man is gone. I mourn his passing every day. Forgetting more and more of who I was, what dreams I held, what things I loved. The sadness now is numb. And I carry on despite the shadow it casts over me. The

The pain makes my thoughts of Eo seem like silly things. It gives false perspective. I want to like the pain, but I can only handle so much. The mixture of water and blood pools at my pale feet. The thought of Eo’s feet dangling makes me fall sobbing to the floor. I push my back into the side of the shower till the pain stops my thinking and I bite my tongue bloody. I’m not as tough as I thought I was. No Helldiver really is. No man really is.

Lykos may be gone. Eo may be silent. Mustang a world away. And the Sons on the brink of extinction. But I feel my soul trickling back into me as I realize I am finally home.

If you’re watching, Eo, it’s time to close your eyes. The Reaper has come. And he’s brought hell with him.

This hurts so much. Eo. I miss her. I miss home. What was her second gift? I never found out. Her sister never told me.

He put his ear to Pax's chest to listen to his heartbeat. He told me then what he felt when he declared this war within the Hives of Phobos. How he was not close enough to hear the fading beat of his father's heart, or Eo's. But how, in that moment, he could feel the hearts of his people beating across the darkness. How in the heartbeat of our son he could hear them all again.

I will give Eo your love. I will make a house for you in the Vale of your fathers. It will be beside my own. Join me there when you die.” He grins. “But I am no builder. So take your time. We will wait.” I nod like I still believe in the Vale. Like I still think it waits for me and for him. “Your people will be free,” I say. “On my life, I promise this. And I will see you soon.

I watch Mustang slink toward me along the rampart. She limps ever so slightly from a sprained ankle, yet she’s all grace. Her hair is a nest of twigs; circles ring her eyes. She smiles at me. She is beautiful. Like Eo. From

You might not believe in our rebellion. But I saw Tactus change before his future was robbed from him. I’ve seen Ragnar forget his bonds and reach for what he wants in this world. I’ve seen Sevro become a man. I’ve seen myself change. I truly do believe we choose who we want to be in this life. It isn’t preordained. You taught me loyalty, more than Mustang, more than Roque. And because of that, I believe in you, Victra. As much as I’ve ever believed in anyone.” I hold out my hand. “Be my family and I will never forsake you. I will never lie to you. I will be your brother as long as you live.” Startled by the emotion in my voice, the cold woman stares up at me. Those defenses she erected forgotten now. In another life we might have been a pair. Might have had that fire I feel for Mustang, for Eo. But not in this life. Victra does not soften. Does not crumble to tears. There’s still rage inside her. Still raw hate and so much betrayal and frustration and loss coiled around her icy heart. But in this moment, she is free of it all. In this moment, she reaches solemnly up to grasp my hand. And I feel the hope flicker in me. “Welcome to the Sons of Ares.

I must learn better than them, not simply beat them. That is how I will help Reds. I am a boy. I am foolish. But if I learn to become a leader, I can be more than an agent of the Sons of Ares. I can give my people a future. That is what Eo wanted. Deep

Es probable que Eo se lo de todo a los niños hambrientos para demostrarle a la Sociedad que no necesita sus premios. ¿Y yo? Yo me comería la fruta y haría política con el estómago lleno. Pero ella rebosa pasión por sus ideales, mientras que yo solo siento pasión por ella

When I look up, he is still dead. This wasn’t right. I thought the Society only played games with its slaves. Wrong. Julian didn’t score like I did on the tests. He wasn’t as physically capable as me. So he was a sacrificial lamb. One hundred students per House and the bottom fifty are only here to be killed by the top fifty. This is just a bloodydamn test … for me. Even the Bellona Family, powerful as they are, could not protect their less capable son. And that is the point. I hate myself. I know they made me do this, yet it still feels like a choice. Like when I pulled Eo’s legs and felt the snap of her small spine. My choice. But what other choice was there with her? With Julian? They do this to make us wear the guilt. There’s nowhere to wipe the blood, only stone and two na**d bodies. This is not who I am, who I want to be. I want to be a father, a husband, a dancer. Let me dig in the earth. Let me sing the songs of my people and leap and spin and run along the walls. I would never sing the forbidden song. I would work. I would bow. Let me wash dirt from my hands instead of blood. I want only to live with my family. We were happy enough. Freedom costs too much. But Eo disagreed. Damn her.

The girl did not even know the video would be leaked. Yet it is her willingness to suffer hardship that gave her power. Martyrs, you see, are like bees. Their only power comes in death. How many of you would sacrifice yourself to not kill, but merely hurt your enemy? Not one of you, I wager.” I taste blood in my mouth. I have the knifeRing Dancer gave me. But I breathe the fury down. I am no martyr. I am not vengeance. I am Eo’s dream. Still, doing nothing while her murderer gloats feels like a betrayal. “In time you will receive your Scars from my sword,” Augustus closes. “But first you must earn them.

Five hundred years.” I shake my head. “This is our bloodydamn planet.” “Through sweat and toil it was made so,” he agrees. “Then what will it take to take it back?” “Blood.” Dancer smiles at me like a township alleycat. There’s a beast behind this man’s fatherly smiles. Eo was right. It comes to violence.

Body trembles. Mouth full of ashes. Wear the mask. Hide the man. Feel nothing. See everything. Move and kill. Move and kill. I am not a man. They are not men. The chanting swells….“Syn tjr rjyka!” Fear is not real. If you’re watching, Eo, it’s time to close your eyes. The Reaper has come. And he’s brought hell with him.

You’re of use because you’re more than a weapon. When your wife died, she didn’t just give you a vendetta. She gave you her dream. You’re its keeper. Its maker. So don’t be spitting anger and hate. You’re not fighting against them, no matter what Harmony says. You’re fighting for Eo’s dream, for your family that is still alive, your people.

I lie there with my eyes closed, listening to her hum. It's a song I know. It's a song I hear in dreams. The echo of my love's death. The song sung by the one they call Persephone. Hummed by an Aureate, an echo of Eo's dream. I weep. If ever I've felt there was a God, it is now as I listen to the mournful chords. My wife is dead, but something of hers lingers still.

And it’s a good idea today too,” I told him. “You’re not just saying that. Tell me the truth, man. I feel sick.” “Before I married Eo, I threw up.” “Bullshit.” “Got it all over my uncle’s boots.” A twinge of pain as I remember he’s gone. “Wasn’t that I was afraid of making the wrong decision. I was afraid she was. Afraid of not living up to her expectations…But my uncle told me that it’s women who see us better than we see ourselves. That’s why you love Victra. That’s why you fight with her. And that’s why you deserve this.

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.

We were enemies as children. Now let us be allies as men. You’re the sword, I’m the pen.” Dancer would want me to accept the offer. It would guarantee my survival. Guarantee my meteoric rise. I would be inside the halls of the ArchGovernor’s mansion. I would be near the man who killed Eo. Oh, I want to accept. But then I would have to let the Proctors beat me. I’d have to let this little whorefart win and let his father smile and feel pride. I’d have to watch that smug smile spread across his bloodydamn face. Slag that. They’ll feel pain. The

I always think about how life would have been if Eo never died. The children I would have had. What I would have named them.” I smile distantly. “I would have grown old. Watched Eo grow old. And I would have loved her more with each new scar, with each new year even as she learned to despise our small life. I would have said farewell to my mother, maybe my brother, sister. And if I was lucky, one day when Eo’s hair turned gray, before it began to fall out and she began to cough, I would hear the shift of rocks over my head on the drill and that would be it. She would have sent me to the incinerators and sprinkled my ashes, then our children would have done the same. And the clans would say we were happy and good and raised bloodydamn fine children. And when those children died, our memory would fade, and when their children died, it would be swept away like the dust we become, down and away to the long tunnels. It would have been a small life,” I say with a shrug, “but I would have liked it. And every day I ask myself if I was given the chance to go back, to be blind, to have all that back, would I?

You’re not meant to be a martyr.” Sighing, she lies back in disappointment. “You wouldn’t see the point to it.” “Oh? Well then, tell me, Eo. What is the point to dying? I’m only a martyr’s son. So tell me what that man accomplished by robbing me of a father. Tell me what good comes of all that bloodydamn sadness. Tell me why it’s better I learned to dance from my uncle than my father.” I go on. “Did his death put food on your table? Did it make any of our lives any better? Dying for a cause doesn’t do a bloodydamn thing. It just robbed us of his laughter.” I feel the tears burning my eyes. “It just stole away a father and a husband. So what if life isn’t fair? If we have family, that is all that should matter.” She licks her lips and takes her time in replying. “Death isn’t empty like you say it is. Emptiness is life without freedom, Darrow. Emptiness is living enchained by fear, fear of loss, of death. I say we break those chains. Break the chains of fear and you break the chains that bind us to the Golds, to the Society. Could you imagine it? Mars could be ours. It could belong to the colonists who slaved here, died here.” Her face is easier to see as night fades through the clear roof. It is alive, on fire. “If you led the others to freedom. The things you could do, Darrow. The things you could make happen.” She pauses and I see her eyes are glistening. “It chills me when I think of the things you could do. You have been given so, so much, but you set your sights so low.” “You repeat the same damn points,” I say bitterly. “You think a dream is worth dying for. I say it isn’t. You say it’s better to die on your feet. I say it’s better to live on our knees.” “You’re not even living!” she snaps. “We are machine men with machine minds, machine lives.…” “And machine hearts?” I ask. “That’s what I am?” “Darrow …” “What do you live for?” I ask her suddenly. “Is it for me? Is it for family and love? Or is it for some dream?” “It’s not just some dream, Darrow. I live for the dream that my children will be born free. That they will be what they like. That they will own the land their father gave them.” “I live for you,” I say sadly. She kisses my cheek. “Then you must live for more.” There’s a long, terrible silence that stretches between us. She does not understand how her words wrench my heart, how she can twist me so easily. Because she does not love me like I love her. Her mind is too high. Mine too low. Am I not enough for her?

that we are the brave souls who sacrifice for the race, that soon our toils for humanity will be over. Soon the softer Colors will join us, once Mars is habitable. But they have already joined us. Earth has come to Mars and we pioneers were left below, slaving, toiling, suffering to create and maintain the foundation of this … this empire. We are as Eo always said—the Society’s slaves. Dancer

If you’re watching, Eo, it’s time to close your eyes. The

I will give Eo your love. I will make a house for you in the Vale of your fathers. It will be beside my own. Join me there when you die.” He grins. “But I am no builder. So take your time. We will wait.” I

I feel the hopes of all those people in bondage who watched as the Sons of Ares rose to take Phobos. We promised them something, and now we must deliver. One by one, my army raises their hands till a sea of fists clench as Eo’s did when she held the haemanthus and fell before Augustus. Chills run through me as Sevro and Victra and Mustang and even my mother raise their hands in union. “Break the chains,” Dancer bellows. I raise my own scarred fist and step silently into the shuttle to join the Red Armada as it sails to war.

My blood goes out. With it go Dancer’s hopes, my father’s sacrifice, Eo’s dream. I can hardly think of them. The mud is dark and cold. This hurts so much. Eo. I miss her. I miss home. What was her second gift? I never found out. Her sister never told me. Now I know pain. Nothing is worth this. Nothing. Let me be a slave again, let me see Eo, let me die. Just not this.

Ares. I know what sort of mission he’ll want. I’m too numb to even know what I’ll say when he asks. My mind is on Eo, not this life. I am a shell. Why could I not have stayed in the ground?

My metal boots grind on stone with the weight of loss: Eo, Ragnar, Fitchner, and all the others who’ve fought and fallen at my side while somehow I have remained alive.

She will not come back, but her beauty, her voice, will echo until the end of time. She believed in something beyond herself, and her death gave her voice power it didn’t have in life. She was pure, like your father. We, you and I”—he touches my chest with the back of his index finger—“are dirty. We are made for blood. Rough hands. Dirty hearts. We are lesser creatures in the grand scheme of things, but without us men of war, no one except those of Lykos would hear Eo’s song. Without our rough hands, the dreams of the pure hearts would never be built.

But never has Eo been more beautiful to me than in that moment. In the face of cold power, she is fire.

If you’re watching, Eo, it’s time to close your eyes. The Reaper has come. And he’s brought hell with him.

He hardly looks like the same man I knew. My hand trembles as it touches his hair, the only part of him that escaped the brutality of Lysander. His hair is no less golden now that he is dead. A single sob comes out of me, followed by tears and silence. Cassius had a heart like Eo, though it took him longer to find it. I wish he’d found it sooner. I don’t know how long I stand there thinking not of the past but all the life he had yet to live now that he’d become the man I always hoped he would be.

Part of me wishes I would remember only Eo. That my mind belonged to her, so I could be like one of those knights of legend. A man so in love with one lost that he closes his heart to all others. But I am not that legend. In so many ways, I'm still a boy, lost and afraid, seeking warmth and love.

The captain survived. He’s a placid, clean-looking man, more limbs than torso, with a fresh gash on his face that pains him terribly. He trembles and sniffles, holding the wound as though his face would fall apart were his hands to leave it. Mother would have called him a shiteating ninnypriss. Eo would have taken a different tack, so I stand over him and speak quietly.

Si aún fuera el hombre que Eo conoció, me habría quedado paralizado de terror. Pero ese hombre ya no existe. Lamento su muerte todos los días. Cada vez olvido más quién era, qué sueños tenía, qué cosas amaba. Ahora la tristeza es sorda. Y yo sigo adelante a pesar de la sombra que proyecta sobre mí.

All the weight falls from my shoulders. Someone knows. He knows and he’s here. He knows and he came to help me. To help me. I can’t stop shaking and saying thank you. Eo was right.

I miss the small cot I used to share with Eo. She's been dead now longer than we were married. I'm surprised how much it hurts to realize that.