Morning Star Quotes

"“Do you know how the Inuit tribes of Earth killed wolves?” I ask. She doesn’t. “Slower and weaker than the wolves, they chiseled knives till they were razor sharp, coated them in blood and stuck them upright in the ice. Then the wolves would come up and lick the blood. And as the wolf licks faster and faster, he’s so ravenous he doesn’t realize until it’s too late that the blood he’s drinking is his own."

"I will not control. I will lead."

"She flew higher, and higher, till the air was thin and I could feel the cold in my bones. She was waiting for me to let go. To weaken. But she did not know that I tied my wrists together. That is as close to Allmother death as I have ever been."

"Mother was never the same. I’d hear her crying in the middle of the day. See her staring out the window. Then one night she went for a walk at Caragmore. The estate my father gave her as a wedding present. He was in Agea working. She never came home. They found her on the rocks beneath the sea cliffs. Father said she slipped. If he was alive now, he’d still say she slipped. I don’t think he could have survived thinking anything else."

"When I was six, my mother was pregnant with a little girl. The doctor said there would be complications with the birth and recommended intervening medically. But my father said that if the child was not fit to survive birth, it did not deserve life. We can fly between the stars. Mold the planets, but father let my sister die in my mother’s womb."

"My father was a titan. But he was wrong. He was cruel. And if I can be something else”—her eyes meet mine—“I will be."

"She was fast. So fast."

"we owe them a debt,” Ragnar says. “For Lorn, Quinn, Trigg. They came here to hunt us. Now we hunt them."

"Ah, my father’s favorite pet.” Aja examines Ragnar. “Has the Stained convinced you he’s tamed? I wonder if he told you how he liked to be rewarded after a fight in the Circada. After the applause faded and he cleaned the blood from his hands, Father would send him young Pinks to satisfy his animal lusts. How greedy he was with them. How frightened they were of him."

"Your father bought me, Aja. Shamed me. Made me his devil. A thing. The child inside fled. The hope vanished. I was Ragnar no more.” He touches his own chest. “But I am Ragnar today, tomorrow, forever more. I am son of the Spires, brother of Sefi the Quiet, brother of Darrow of Lykos, and Sevro au Barca. I am the Shield of Tinos. I follow my heart. And when yours beats no more, foul Knight, I will pull it from your chest and feed it to the griffin of the…"

"We separate. Stumbling backward. Humorless smiles on our faces—a bizarre kinship as we remember we all speak the same martial language."

"Never fight a river, and never fight Aja."

"I always dreamed of a good death.” He shudders as he realizes again that he’s dying. “This does not seem good."

"No, Sefi,” he says, dropping the axe and taking snow in his left hand, her hand with his right. “Live for more."

"I will make a house for you in the Vale of your fathers. It will be beside my own."

"He smiled in the end,” she says softly. “Do you know why? Because he knew what he was doing was right. He was fighting for love. You’ve made a family of your friends. You always have. It made Ragnar a better man to know you. So you didn’t get him killed. You helped him live."

"Who are you to bring the corpse of my best born to my spire?"

"I do not know the Abyss, oh, worldly warlord, but I know the ice. I know the serpents that slither in the hearts of men."

"Which would you fear more, Virginia au Augustus, a god? Or a mortal with the power of a god?” The question hangs between them, creating a rift words cannot mend. “A god cannot die. So a god has no fear. But mortal men…” She clucks her tongue behind her stained teeth. “How frightened they are that the darkness will come. How horribly they will fight to stay in the light."

"How sad, the dependability of greed to make men fools."

"She knew."

"Children of the Spires, the Reaper has called us to join him in his war against false gods. Do the Valkyrie answer?"

"Up and lead the dance of Fate! Lift the song that mortals hate… Tell what rights are ours on earth, Over all of human birth Swift of foot to avenge are we! He whose hands are clean and pure. Naught our wrath to dread hath he."

"Ride to kin and enemy alike and tell them Sefi speaks. Tell them Ragnar’s prophets told true. Asgard has fallen. The gods are dead. The old oaths have been broken. And tell all who will hear: the Valkyrie ride to war."

"They call me the Morning Star. That star by which griffin-riders and travelers navigate the wastes in the dark months of winter. The last star that disappears when daylight returns in the spring."