Page 130 of The Crimson Throne
There are people around me.
Innocents?
No.
No oneis innocent.
They all had a hand in this, and even if they didn’t, they will suffer anddiefor this attack.No oneattacks me.No one—
“Samson—”
Fight,fight,get up andfight now.
I cry out, back arching, pain flaring in every nerve, rippling in tremors up my spine and crashing over my head in stabs of agony.
I roll away—away fromsomething—and brace on my hands and knees, fingers clawed into cold dirt, the air around me scorching.
“You are not a mindless fighter.”
That voice—I know it.
Knowher.
But she’s not here. She’s not here because I tried to kill her, and the next time I see her, she’ll end all this. All this pain. All this fear.
She’ll end me.
So I know she’s not here, because if she were, I would be dead.
My chest splits apart, and I scream withhungerso potent, it’ll eat the world around me if I don’t feed it.
Fight, fight, FIGHT NOW—
“ You—you—are still inside that body of yours—”
A shape forms near me. I don’t even know what it is, but I lunge at it, rearing back at the last second becauseno, STOP, I don’t want this.
Only I do.
I’m a fighter.
I have the kind of power no one in this country, in thisworld, can counter, and I can unleash it and feast on the remnants I leave behind.
Why have I stopped? Why have I fought this so hard?
Because I’m pathetic.
Because I’m scared and weak and wanted to stay those things.
I bend double, forehead to the slick grass, and scream.
“You are going to fight it,” she says. She’s not here, my mind’s fraying to insanity, but even made-up, she’s an anchor in this hurricane. “That’s what you do, Samson. You fight.”
There are different kinds of fighting, ain’t there?
Southwark. After Ma died, I scraped in a workhouse. I stole. Lied. Cheated.Survived.Survived every damn day. Bowed to Cecil, not because I was weak but because I wasfighting.
All that.
