Athena’s Reviews > Steel Scars > Status Update

For once, his smile is real. No jokes, no mask. “Are you with us, Shade Barrow?” “I’m with you, Diana.” “Then we will rise.” His voice joins mine. “Red as the dawn.”

Shade looks on, expectant. I realize he’s holding my hand, not minding the blood coagulating beneath my fingers. “My name is Diana.”

When the Colonel was called Papa, and the Scarlet Guard was the pipe dream of hunters and farmers and empty soldiers. My name is my mother, my sister Madeline, and their graves dug in the frozen ground of a village no one lives in anymore


SHADE gave Diana a reason to like her name again 😭

My name. The others don’t mind using their own, but for me, there is no such thing. My name holds no importance. Only rank and designation truly matter. What my mother called me is of no consequence to anyone, least of all me. It is a burden more than anything, a stinging reminder of her voice and the life we lived in early days.

For a man who can move faster than the blink of an eye, somehow he manages to take the world’s slowest step forward. We stand eye to eye, blue meeting gold. Curiosity gets the better of me. “And that is?” “What’s your name?”

Slowly, I close my fingers around his wrist. He still bleeds, but I don’t mind. It’s fitting. “Will you oath yourself to the Scarlet Guard?” I expect him to smile. Instead his face turns to stone. “On one condition.” My eyebrows raise so high they might disappear into my hairline. “The Guard does not bargain.” “This isn’t a request to the Guard, but to you,” he replies.

—You’re a special kind of stupid, kid. —RAM—

So there’s still affection between Farely and her father

The age difference isn’t weird it’s just an observation

I am twenty-two years old, a captain of the Scarlet Guard, and no one, not even the Colonel, can tell me I am wrong now.

Shade is 19

On another day, my team would spend hours tracking them all to their homes, only to watch them sleep off the long journey. Not so now. Because it’s First Friday. Today is the Feat of July.

This is where Red Queen begins