I turned around slowly, and looked up at him. He stiffened and sucked in a shallow breath. After a moment, he touched my cheek. "Such naked pain," he whispered. I turned my face into his palm and closed my eyes. His fingers threaded into my hair, cupped my head, and brushed the brand. It heated at his touch. His hand tightened at the base of my skull and squeezed, and he raised me slowly to my tiptoes. I opened my eyes and it was my turn to inhale sharply. Not human. Oh, no, not this man. "Never show it to me again." His face was cold, hard, his voice colder.

Nobody looks good in their darkest hour. But it's those hours that make us what we are. We stand strong, or we cower. We emerge victorious, tempered by our trails, or fracture by a permanent, damning fault line.

I realized early in my career that precisely what one reader doesn't like is what another reader loves. Collectively, any writer's audience presents a mishmash of expectations that can never all be met. What one-tenth of my readership may not be crazy about the other nine-tenths savors. The moment you start altering a book or a painting or any type of art as if it's a public collaborative, you crucify its soul. I'd rather irritate a few people and delight a lot than touch no one." ~ Karen Marie Moning

I miss her. I don't know how to live without her. There is a hole inside me that nothing fills. If you don't find something to fill that hole, someone else will. And if someone else fills it, they own you. Forever. You'll never get yourself back.

Good and evil are merely opposite sides of a coin. Get tossed in the air enough, it's easy to come down on the wrong side.

When Darroc returns, I know by the look in his eyes that I've chosen well. He thinks I picked black and red for him, the colors of his guard, the colors he has told me he selected for his future court. I chose black and red for the tattoos on Barrons' body. Tonight I wear my promise to him that I will make things right.

Assume' makes an 'ass' out of 'u' and 'me'.