I wasn’t yet seventeen, but I knew enough now to understand that the world was more complicated than mathematics, however advanced, and that there were no perfect solutions to it. Whichever hand I took, tomorrow I would still be ill, tomorrow Guilder would still think he owned me and my work, tomorrow I would have given up on Helen and Eva, or on Mia and Demus.
But that was tomorrow. Two Nicks reached for two different hands. I was the one that reached for Mia’s. She turned to me, relief and concern warring across a face that I felt I could love forever. She reached for me. And, following the advice I had once left for myself on a note six months and half a lifetime ago, I kissed the girl.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2010 Nick Williams
Before becoming an author, Mark Lawrence was a research scientist for twenty years, working on artificial intelligence. He is a dual national with both British and American citizenship, and has held secret-level clearance with both governments. At one point, he was qualified to say, ‘This isn’t rocket science – oh wait, it actually is.’
He is the author of the Broken Empire trilogy (Prince of Thorns, King of Thorns and Emperor of Thorns), the Red Queen’s War trilogy (Prince of Fools, The Liar’s Key and The Wheel of Osheim) and the Book of the Ancestor series (Red Sister, Grey Sister and Holy Sister).
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