She would like to restrain from cruelty and receive no admiration for it.

She crossed the room to him, put her arms around him, clung to him, turning her face to the side, learning all at once that it was awkward to show a person all of one's love when one's nose was broken.

Garan snorted. "Now that we know about his indigestion, we can torture him with cake.

I'm not good at love. I'm like a barbed creature. I push everyone I love away.

Isn't is lovely to be all together again?" Raffin said, throwing one arm around Po and the other around Bann. -------- She wanted them near, even if they were subsumed by their own affairs, she needed them at sword practice in the morning, at dinner at night, moving and shifting around her, there and gone, back again, arguing, teasing, acting like people who knew who they were.

They seemed no closer to the tops of the peaks that rose before them. It was only by looking back, to the forest far below, that she knew they'd climbed.

Still doing your best to ruin the horses, I see.