It began as most thing begin. Not on a dark and stormy night. Not foreshadowed by ominous here comes the villain music, dire warning at the bottom of a teacup, or dread portents in the sky. It began small and innocuously, as most catastrophes do. A butterfly flaps its wings somewhere and the wind changes, and a warm front hits a cold front off the coast of western Africa and before you know it you’ve got an hurricane closing in. By the time anyone figured out the storm was coming, it was too late to do anything but batten down the hatches and exercise damage control.

Was he a good kisser, Ms. Lane?” Barrons asked, watching me carefully. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand at the memory. “It was like being owned.” Some women like that.” Not me.” Perhaps it depends on the man doing the owning.” I doubt it. I couldn’t breathe with him kissing me.” One day you may kiss a man you can’t breathe without, and find breath is of little consequence.” Right, and one day my prince might come.” I doubt he’ll be a prince, Ms. Lane. Men rarely are.

Goor or evil, right or wrong, he mattered to me.

Observations,” he says. “Four imperial Unseelie guards were the only commonality I was able to isolate endemic to both scenes.” They’d been standing, armed, at the dock doors, overseeing the delivery. He gives me a sidewise look. “Wow. That was, like, a whole sentence. With nouns and verbs and connective tissue. Endemic. Fancy word.

Omnipotent not omniscient. We are frequently blinded by how much we see.

When he kisses me again, the last part of me that could stand myself dies.

Barrons, Jericho: I haven't the faintest fecking clue. He keeps saving my life. I suppose that's something.