Your face will freeze like that, you know, Kat," Raffin said helpfully to Katsa. "Maybe I should rearrange your face, Raff," said Katsa. "I should like smaller ears," Raffin offered. "Prince Raffin has nice, handsome ears," Helda said, not looking up from her knitting. "As will his children. Your children will have no ears at all, My Lady," she said sternly to Katsa. Katsa stared back at her, flabbergasted. "I believe it's more that her ears won't have children," began Raffin, "which, you'll agree, sounds much less—

...you could not measure love on a scale of degrees, and now she understood that it was the same with pain. Pain might escalate upward and, just when you thought you'd reach your limit, begin to spread sideways, and spill out, and touch other people, and mix with their pain. And grow larger, but somehow less oppressive. She had thought herself trapped in a place outside the ordinary feeling lives of people; she had not noticed how many other people were trapped in that place with her.

And she would protect him as fiercely, if it were ever his need- if a fight ever became too much for him or if he needed shelter, or food, or a fire in the rain. Or anything she could provide. She would protect him from anything.

If we're to be judged by our parents and grandparents, then we all may as well impale ourselves upon jagged bits of rock.

There are no medicines to bring a dead thing back to life.

I love you," he said. "You're more dear to my heart than I ever knew anyone else can be. And I've made you cry; and there I'll stop." She was crying, but not because of his words. It was because of a certainty she refused to consider while she sat before him.

Bitterblue had never seen a man naked, and she was curious. She decided the universe owed her a few minutes, just a few, to satisfy her curiosity. So she went to him and knelt, which shut him up.