Sacrifice Quotes

"I once heard that if a Jackal becomes trapped, it will chew off its own leg to free itself. That knife might be easier than using teeth."

"I shout at the Grays to get in the pod. Only one stays behind now, face drawn and quiet, as the sergeant and a corporal pull themselves into the escape pod. They strap in across from me. I activate the launch function and salute the Gray who stays behind. He salutes back, proud and loyal despite the quiet in him as he faces his last moment of life, eyes distant and thinking of some young love, some path not taken, perhaps wondering why he was not born Gold."

"She kills our friend. She kills Quinn, but we let her walk away for the grander scheme. Everything costs something, Darrow. Perhaps you’ll soon tire of making your friends pay."

"I didn’t mind that it was always about you, Darrow. That was what burned Tactus, but not me. I’m not in love with you like Mustang. I don’t worship you like Sevro or the Howlers. I was a true friend. I was someone who saw your light and your dark and accepted both without judgment, without agenda. And what did you do to me? You used me like a man uses a horse. I’m better than that. Quinn was better than that."

"I told you I have no interest in the Rim. Now I will prove it. There are over three hundred and fifty Sons of Ares cells throughout your territories,” I say. “We are your dock strikes. We are the sanitation sabotage and the reason why Nessus’s streets fill with shit. Even if you hand me over to the Sovereign today, the Sons will bleed you for a thousand years. But I will give you every single Sons of Ares cell in the Rim, I will abandon the lowColors here and take my crusade to the Core, never coming through the asteroid belt as long as I live if you help me kill his bloodydamn fleet."

"When my uncle gave me my slingBlade, he said it would save my life for the price of a limb. Every miner is told that so that he knows from the first day he steps in the mine, the sacrifice is worth it. I make one now for which I may never be forgiven."

"I am Roque au Fabii of the gens Fabii. My ancestors walked upon red Mars. They fell upon Old Earth. I have lost the day, but I have not lost myself. I will not be a prisoner.” His eyes close. His hand trembles. “I am the star in the night sky. I am the blade in the twilight. I am the god, the glory.” His breath shudders out. He is afraid. “I am the Gold."

"I was an uncle once. I was good at that."

"I remember the feeling of being under the ground, Darrow,” he says slowly. “The cold stone under my hands. My Pluto housemembers around me, hunched in the darkness. The steam on their breaths, looking to me. I remember how afraid I was of failing. Of how long I had prepared, how little my father thought of me. All my life weighed in those few moments. All of it slipping away. We’d run from our castle, fleeing Vulcan. They came so fast. They were going to enslave us. The last of our housemembers were still running through the tunnel by the time I rigged the mines to blow, but so were Vulcan. I could hear my father’s voice. Hear him telling me how he was not surprised I failed so quickly. It was a week before we killed a girl and ate her legs to survive. She begged us not to. Begged us to choose someone else. But I learned then in that moment if no one sacrifices, then no one survives."

"I never wanted to nuke Mars,” the Jackal says. “I was born on Mars. It is my birthright, the prize from which all things flow. Her helium is the blood of the empire. But this moon, this skeleton orb is, like Octavia, a treacherous old crone sucking at the marrow of the Society, crowing about what was instead of what can be. And Octavia let me ransom it. Just as you will, because you are weak and you did not learn what you should have at the Institute. To win, you must sacrifice."

"We’re missing this,” she says eventually. “Life. The dinner tonight, I’ll remember forever. The lightning bugs. The children in the yard. The smell of rain on its way.” She looks over at me. “Just seeing you laughing. I shouldn’t remember it. It should be one of thousands."

"Those you protect will not see you. They will not understand you. But you are the Gray wall between civilization and chaos. And they stand safe in the shadow you cast. Do not expect praise or love. Their ignorance is proof of the success of your sacrifice. For we who serve the state, duty must be its own reward."

"I urge you to feel my death. To let it be the last casualty, and not the first of this war that claimed my father, my daughter, my son, and now me."

"War is our time. Sevro thought he could escape it. I thought I could end it. But our enemy is like the Hydra. Cut off one head, two more sprout. They will not sue for peace. They will not surrender. Their heart must be excised, their will to fight ground to the finest dust. Only then will there be peace."

"Don’t let Glirastes’s death haunt you, Lysander. Now that you’re in the game, he won’t be the last friend you sacrifice."

"War requires monstrous deeds! If you cannot be a monster, then get out of the way!"

"I grieve for Orion. She was a shooting star, and it will be an age before mankind sees another one quite like her. I grieve for Alexandar. I know you took him on as a debt to Lorn and grew to love him, despite seeing so much of yourself in him. He was the best Gold of his generation, but he set to make himself in your image, a Red’s, and he did. When the waves came for Tyche, he proved he lived for more."

"Diomedes was your friend, but barely. So take a moment. Weigh your loss against ours. We who have given our blood, our lives, our futures to House Lune. We who have abdicated legacy for ourselves by forsaking the chance for children. We who would give our lives for you, if you but asked.” He sets his Praetorian dagger on his thigh. “And consider, perhaps we are due more than gratitude, gilded though it might be."

"I am guilty of enough crimes for a thousand men. Torture, kidnapping, blackmail, murder, bombings, Rains. All of it. I have broken nearly every oath I have taken. I have flattened cities, set fire to generations, raised oceans, broken worlds. I’ve killed men, women, children, if not with my own hands, then with ships under my command. I have betrayed mentors and friends and led them to their deaths. I have left my legions to die to save myself. In my name, if not by my consent or orders, prisoners have been slaughtered, populations displaced, ice caps melted, Iron Rains hurled down on the just and unjust alike. I am guilty. I reek of blood and shame. I am sorry for what I’ve done, but I will not apologize for why I did it. I believe in the dream of Eo, the dream of Ares, the dream of Ragnar. That we are all born with the right to choose our own destinies. To live in peace. To pass down that same freedom to our children. I will not apologize for that. For doing all I can to give this dream to my son."

"In a world of chaos, where it is all against all, strength is not measured in the power of a body nor the numbers of your host. Strength is measured only in what the heart can bear to attain its goal.” He peers around at his jarls. “What we are willing to sacrifice is the test of our worth. I have sacrificed everything!"

"You have killed in battle, it is true. But there is another kind of killing. A difficult but necessary kind. The killing of a captive or a foe who is at your mercy. There is no honor in it. That is the point: to take an honorless, necessary action. One that helps your people, but blackens your heart. Your sacrifice to your people is bearing the guilt of what must be done."

"No, Lysander. You choose. That’s the point of it all. Isn’t it? You choose. The chair means this much to you? More than the people in your life who love you?"

"I must. I am Cassius Bellona, son of Tiberius, son of Julia, brother of Darrow, Morning Knight of the Solar Republic, and my honor remains."

"Akari asked for Gold to be philosopher kings. Maybe we were that way once. Now we are just dragons guarding our treasure. We may be superior in intelligence, in our life spans, in our capacity for violence, but not in our humanity. We failed, Grandmother, long before Atlas set his warlord on us, long before Rhea. We are medieval. We are grotesque. I love you with all my heart. But you represent a past that fears the future. I will not accept that. So, if it is true that the young cannot teach the old, and the old must always teach the young: kill me, for I will learn no other way."