...they cupped their wings around their happiness and called it a world, though they both knew it was not a world, only a hiding place, which is a very different thing.

In moments Akiva was up in the ether, scarcely feeling the sting of ice crystals in the thin air. He let his glamour fall away, and his wings were like sheets of fire sweeping the black of the heavens. He moved at speed, onward toward another human city to find another doorway bitter with the devil's magic, and after that another, until all bore the black handprint....Once all the doors were marked, the end would begin. And it would begin with fire.

Are you saying you don't love me?" Hazael asked Liraz. "Because I love you. I think." He paused in contemplation. "Oh. No. Never mind. That's fear.

I've always imagined that one day the path of your life would unroll at your feet and carry you away from us. As it should, as it must. But I am glad that day is not today.

All right," sighed Madrigal. "To the baths, then. To make ourselves shiningly clean." Like vegetable, she thought, before they go in the stew.

It's all a quilt of fairy tales with a patch here and there of truth.

And they were quiet but their blood and nerves and butterflies were not—they were rampantly alive, rushing and thrumming in a wild and perfect melody, matched note for note.