Wo ai ni, Tessa,” he whispered. “Wo bu xiang shi qu ni.” She knew, without knowing how she knew, what the words meant. I love you. And I don’t want to lose you.

Come back to me, Tessa. Henry said that perhaps, since you had touched the soul of an angel, that you dream of Heaven now, of fields of angels and flowers of fire. Perhaps you are happy in those dreams. But I ask this out of pure selfishness. Come back to me. For I cannot bear to lose all my heart.

It was stupid to hope, she knew. But sometimes hope was all you had.

The way Magnus’ breath had sounded, rattling in his chest, before he’d said his father’s name.

If I held a revolver to your head, James, and pulled the trigger, would it really matter if I did not know that there were not bullets in the chambers?

She had never asked herself whether it cost him any effort. Any effort to stand between Will and the world, protecting each one of them from the other.

There is no god, not a god who would create the things I saw