The Mercy of Gods (The Captive's War Book 1)

“It’s his pathological move. I get it.” “I don’t know the term.” “It’s the thing people do when they’re working on instinct. When they’re stressed and overwhelmed, there’s something they go to by reflex. Tonner focuses down on something small enough to control. Campar makes jokes. Jessyn withdraws. Everyone has something.”

The universe is in constant change from the smallest measures to the greatest. To cling to one state of being over any others is foolish and futile and doomed. That which we encountered, we studied, often to destruction. That which we touched, we changed. Nothing within our reach escaped our influence.

“I think some important scientific questions have finally been answered. Alien life exists, and they are assholes.”

Later, when he stood in the eye of a storm that burned a thousand worlds, he’d remember how it all started with Else Yannin’s hand on his arm and his need to give her a reason to keep it there.

“If there isn’t a quieter way, we can always go loud,” Dafyd said. “But once we’ve gone loud, we can’t go quiet.”

She found herself grinning. It was so rare to feel satisfied. It was so odd to know for certain that she’d done well.

We did not see the adversary for what he was, and we brought him into our home.

What you did with a tree branch, we did with you and countless others before you. Why me? is not something the universe ever answers.

The slow, low pulse of being alive kept making its demands, no matter what. However bad it was, however mind-breaking and strange and painful, the mundane insisted on its cut.