The battle had been invisible to the naked eye, but the hardest ones are.

Moth to a flame I follow.

I am going to love you now, slow and sweet.

Hours later, Adam propped himself up on an elbow and stared down at Gabrielle, pondering what made beauty. He thought he was beginning to understand. It wasn't symmetry of features; it wasn't perfection. It was uniqueness. That which one person had that no other possessed. That which was only their own.

The paranoid one's wards are still active. They keep me several feet from the building." "But not his car," I said, a smile tugging at my lips. Barrons would go nuts if he knew that V'lane had touched his Viper. And stretched out on it nude? He'd have an aneurysm.

But it seems Ive got this set of scales inside me that I never used to have, or at least I wasnt aware of, and I cant shake the feeling that if I dont try to keep them balanced, Ill lose something I wont be able to get back.

There was pain, but there was also joy. It was in the tension between the two that life happened. Imperfect as it was, this world was real. Illusion was no substitute. I'd rather live a hard life of fact than a sweet life of lies.