Nothing powers hate better than embarrassment.

Tempus would be protected, better shielded from whatever the Stepson thought threatening, if love could heal and save.

Choose life over death, Niko, when a choice can be made that puts no soul in jeopardy.

A wise one determines his own fate.

Wisdom, Niko thought as he leaned his cheek against his long-handled rake, cannot be had without price.

You must become like yourself.

In every age he had ever studied, doomsayers abounded. No millennium is attractive to the man immured in it; enough prophecies have been made in antiquity that one who desires, in any age, to take the position that apocalypse is at hand can easily defend it. He would not join that dour order; he would not worry about anything but Tempus, and the matter awaiting his attention.