Sometimes you have to go somewhere else to appreciate what we have here.

His aster-blue eyes shown out from a face blackened by bruises and soot, his fair hair glittering in the firelight. Dressed all in black, silhouetted against flame, he looked rather like a demon, raised from the dead, trading for souls on the other side.

Jason settled back on the bench. 'I hate to break this to you, but as a rule, wizards are nasty people. They're powerful, capricious, ruthless, egotistical, used to getting their own way. That's being kind.

He expects nothing, she thought, because he's never had anything. And nothing was expected of him. He was free in a way she never would be.

She padded toward Han, barefoot, like a faerie startled out of a forest bower, bewitching mix of clan and flatland beauty.

Admit nothing - that was his first rule. Appeal to logic - second rule. Delay the inevitable - third rule.

Just a rat, she repeated to herself. After all, there were rats in the palace. Human and otherwise. Could be worse.