It's all very romantic," Gabriel said, and then frowned. "Or it would be, if my brother could get a word out without sounding like a choking frog. I fear he will not go down in history as one of the world's greatest wooers of women.

The measure of love is to love without measure. - attributed to Saint Augustine

That sounds terrific, thought Cary, just you, your comatose wife your shell-shocked son, and your daughter who hates your guts. Not to mention that your two kids may be in love with each other. Yeah, that sounds like a perfect family reunion.

It would be one thing if I had been cursed so that everyone I loved would die," said Will. "I could keep myself from loving. To keep others from caring for me--it is an odd, exhausting procedure.

She jerked hastily back to avoid stepping on it, and her shoulder bumped his--he put a hand out to steady her, just as she turned to apologize and then she was somehow in the circle of his arm and he was kissing her.

That was what humans did: They left on another messages through time, pressed between pages or carved into rock. Like reaching out a hand through time, and trusting in a phantom hoped-for hand to catch yours. Humans did not last forever. They could only hope what they made would endure.

There’s more to honesty than … than an arrangement of words. They say faeries can’t lie, but you lie in your intentions, your attitude, your demeanor —