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“Darrow.” Apollonius smiles. “My ultimate prey.”
“Indeed. I will not be like them. In their shadow, I will create something greater, something stronger, something fairer. But it seems nothing fair is made by fairness.”
“I care nothing for fairness, nor any of your pretentious-minded virtues,” he declares with a wave of an armored hand. “They are for simpletons. No morality constrains my limitless mind, save my word. You know what I want, little paramour.”
“Atalantia, Ajax, Atlas. And then Darrow.”
“And the Mind’s Eye,” he says with hunger.
“I can give you that, and the rest, but I need something in return.”
He leans his huge mass back. “Dare I ask? What must I sacrifice upon the altar for my heart’s delight?”
“Nothing.” His eyes narrow. “You have been mistreated, misunderstood, and betrayed. You have watched me suffer the same. We are alike, Apollonius. It seems a pity that we should be so alone.” I lean back and sip my wine. “May I ask, do you care at all for rule?”
“It bores me, as does this conversation.”
“I know how you will die, Apollonius.”
“Ooo, much better. How?”
“You will die the apex predator of this world, having stained it with your legend and the blood of your foes. So that when, in old age, you sit beneath the sycamores of Thessalonica to die, you know you venture into the Void not burdened by your conquests, not fettered with responsibility of rule, but light as the ether that binds the heavens as you drink your Thessalonican red and reminisce of the enemies you cut to their knees.”
He is enchanted. “And with whom will I reminisce?”
“The ally who asks for nothing but your blade and cunning mind, who takes the burden of rule from your shoulders and exempts you from fealty, from all oaths, save the one where you gave your word to stand beside him against the worlds.”
I extend a hand. With a smile, he seizes it in his immense gauntlet. His eyes blaze with excitement.
“To the trembling of the worlds,” he whispers.
Together, we gaze at the graveyard of tyrants. In the days before the Rising, the people of Mercury would come to this place and follow the statue’s extended arms, which pointed at midnight to Luna to remind them where power truly resided.
When I found the statues, they lay fallow in the dirt, covered with war machines and blood. Their arms pointing in all directions. Now, no longer a bickering mass in a shared grave, they stand together again. They point together toward a small patch of the sky where at noon a distant sphere, appearing no larger than a small grain of sand, circles the sun. They point to remind my guest and all of Mercury our task is yet unfinished.
They point toward Mars.
For Lily
THIS ONE WAS A MENTAL TWISTER. Frankensteinian to the highest degree, it is the jigsaw sum of many false starts and wayward narratives. It came together only with the help of the legions of support shock troops over at my publisher, Del Rey. Ever since I published Red Rising with them in 2014, they’ve had my six (that’s my back, for the jargon-weary), and moved mountains to make sure my books find new eyes. Without the platform they create, and the marketing efforts of David Moench, Emily Isayeff, and Julie Leung, this series would never have found so many of you at comic-cons, or its way onto the shelves of your local bookstores. All hail the propagandists of the Reaper!
To my editor, Tricia Narwani, thank you for all you’ve done on this book. Your contribution and patience cannot be overstated. For countless midnight editing sessions, enduring my nonsensical Apollonius soliloquies over the phone, for indefatigable cheer, sinister notes, bloodthirsty spirit, unflagging trust, and that childlike sense of joy you exude when I finally hit the right note—thank you. But most of all, thank you for believing in my vision for the book enough to give me the time to see that vision through. Somehow, we survived the Ladon!
A hearty thanks also goes out to the Del Rey and Penguin Random House command staff—Gina Centrello, Scott Shannon, and Keith Clayton. It’s a hell of a thing to push back a publishing date once, much less twice. Yet you let me do it, simply because I said it’d be a better book if I had more time. Not once did I feel pressured by you to turn in an inferior product to meet a deadline—though I’m sure your nails are rather ragged from nervous biting. You gave me the time, the space, and the trust to make this book a bloody spectacle.
Thank you as well to Dennis Ambrose, who, with his copy edits, performed a last-minute miracle Gandalf himself would be proud of. I’m sorry I made up so many words. But somehow Tim Gerard Reynolds still makes them sound bloodydamn slick. And thank you to Alex Larned, who’s cheerfully done all the unglamorous day-to-day work of keeping this project rolling and who gave me all those pesky-but-necessary notes on the details.
A shout across the void for Hannah Bowman, my literary agent. Without her, Red Rising would never have gotten past the slush pile, and more characters would certainly be alive. Thank you also to Havis Dawson. I promise those 6166s are on the way any day now. And to Jon Cassir, Dave Feldman, and Elizabeth Newman for their continued support even when I disappear for months at a time with only an Instagram post of my dog for explanation.
A Telemanus-sized round of applause for the cartographer Joel Daniel Phillips, who dreamed up the sigils for the Society with me at his parents’ house in the woods nearly eight years ago. Having an artist of his stature bless this story with his maps and house sigils is a true gift. For those of you who do not know how very special Joel’s art is, I suggest you take a look at JoelDanielPhillips.com. His latest work was inspiration for the devastation of Red Reach.
Certainly we can’t forget the mentors. Thank you to my personal Lorn au Arcos, Terry Brooks, who chuckled when I went radio silent, accurately diagnosed my fears that I’d created a Phrygian Knot, and who, along with Judine, gave me a blessed moment of respite along the Oregon coast during my last kamikaze writing spree. And to my mentat (yeah that’s a Dune deep cut), Jake Bloom, who gave me sturdy advice and solid ground to stand on amid the shifting tectonics of the film industry, and Ruth Bloom for many happy meals and happier conversations.
Thank you to my friends for bearing with my hermit habits, irrational stress, tunnel vision, and Swiss-cheese brain. I may not be entirely sane after writing this book, but any claim to partial sanity is owed in no small measure to you, and the ministrations of Lily Robinson. Lily, you, more than any other, bore the day-in, day-out weight of this book’s writing. Thank you for the countless midday teas, the psychological counseling, the accidental wisdom, the purposeful wisdom, your utter forbearance, your acceptance of my weird mania, my inability to multitask or find my keys, and my obsession with this wonky world of hi-tech Romans and space Vikings.
Thank you to my parents, who read me stories before I could read. They bought me books and books and more books, and let me play in the forest, and took me to see Star Wars, and went to every sporting match I ever had, and put a roof over my head when I wrote Red Rising and those many books that came before. It’s impossible to say how grateful I am to you two for giving me a foundation, and a sister as loyal as Blair. Blair, thank you for always being the attack dog at my side, for your work with the Sons of Ares, and for the management of my website with the good folks at
Marca Global. You, my goodlady, would certainly be a Peerless Scarred.
