Go safely. Go safely, she thought to him. what a silly, empty thing it was to say to anyone, anywhere.

I’m as old as both of you,” she said, even though she suspected she wasn’t, “and I’m smarter, and I can probably fight as well as you can.

Lady Queen," he said, "You've given me all I want. You're the queen a librarian dreams of.

And of course she understood now why her body wanted to run whenever he appeared. It was a correct instinct, for there was nothing to be got from this but sadness.

Through an arrow loop in the wall she saw a familiar horse and rider tearing across the camp toward the healing rooms. Brigan pulled up at Nash's feet and dropped from the saddle. The two brothers threw their arms around each other and embraced hard. Shortly thereafter he stepped into the healing rooms and leaned in the doorway, looking across at her quietly. Brocker's son with the gentle gray eyes. She abandoned all pretense of decorum and ran at him.

Everyone wants a bit of something beautiful.

When a monster stopped behaving like a monster, did it stop being a monster? Did it become something else?