Status Updates From A Reaper at the Gates (An E...

“Always us. My eyes burn from smoke; my face is wet. Always my people.”

😭😭

“Rage for my enemies, I think. Love for my people. This is my song.”

😭😭 helene aquilla princess of everything

“My song is not one of peace. It is one of failure and pain. My song is one of battle and blood, death and power. It is not the song of Helene Aquilla. It is the song of the Blood Shrike. And I cannot find it. I cannot wrap my mind around it.”

😭😭😭😭

“I hum tunelessly, fighting the pain, searching for my song. I close my eyes, and I am a girl again, comforting Hannah when she came into my bed at night, terrified of monsters. Mother would find us huddling together and sing us to sleep. Sometimes in the deep night at Blackcliff, thinking of her song brought me peace.”

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“You’re going to be fine, Hel—Shrike.” A crack in Harper’s voice. Emotion? Fear?

“Don’t let anyone see me,” I whisper. “This—this is undig—dignified.”

A bark of laughter. “Only you would think that while your guts are leaking out onto the damned pavement. Hold on, Blood Shrike. The barracks aren’t far.”

helvitas 😭🥹😭🥹

woah i didn’t realise this was that kind of book

yo how is he teleporting

“As the throng dissipates, I feel the tug of my healing again. Hope is stronger than fear. What if I was able to give these people a greater measure of hope?”

“My body grows fatigued, but there are dozens of injured left. One by one, I sing them well, until I can hardly walk. I need to leave. I need to rest.”

😭🥹

helene & avitas 🥹🥹🥹

“For a moment I see what we could have had: Laia and her books and patients, and me and a school that taught more than death and duty. A little one with gold eyes and glowing brown skin. The white in Laia’s hair one day, and the way her eyes will mellow and deepen and grow wiser.”

😭😭😭

“You don’t need to warn me, damn you,” he mutters. The ambassador furrows his brow, and I realize that Marcus isn’t responding to the man. He’s talking to himself.”

surely he’s not schizo
is it zak’s ghost

😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

“Grief ripples across her silver features. She seems older, suddenly, than her twenty years, with the implacability of a five-body blade. All the weakness has been hammered out of her. She has seen too much blood. Too much death.”

😭😭😭

“Her defiance reminds me of Hannah. I wonder briefly if, in another life, the Scholar and I could have been friends.”

in this life TRUST

“Even as she fights, a fey part of my mind trills at the life within her. She has healed. She is strong. The fact should irk me. But the magic I used on Laia binds us together, a tie that runs deeper than I’d like. I feel relief at her vigor, as if I’d learned that my little sister Livia is healthy.”