Nina Varela

“Their views on humankind are too extreme for my taste. It is one thing to subjugate those who are inferior and another thing entirely to behave as if they don’t exist. We must build policy around the reality of where we came from. We were not created in a void, history-less. It is ignorant to think we cannot learn from humanity’s existing structures.”

You couldn’t depend on much in this world, but you could depend on this: love brought nothing but death. Where love existed, death would follow, a wolf trailing after a wounded deer. Scenting blood in the air. Ayla had learned that the hard way.

Justice was a god, and Ayla didn’t believe in such childish things.

She believed in blood.

better to do what was right than to be kind.

Act only when the odds are on your side, Ayla. Gamble with bread and coins, not your life.

Crier looked at her, and smiled. Wide and bright as the whole damn sky