My face responds without authorization from my brain, so the resulting smile feels like the biggest, most unguarded, goofiest smile I’ve ever unleashed in my entire life. I didn’t even know my face could do this. It’s like there were hidden zippers in my cheeks. Jesus. This must be what feelings are. This is why people write poems! I get it now. I get it, and I want more.

That is your legend?" Akiva asked, incredulous. Madrigal had told him the story of the sun and Ellai while they flew. "That seraphim are the blood of a rapist sun?

A bruxis. That was the one wish more powerful than a gavriel, and its trade value was singular: The only way to purchase one was with one’s own teeth. All of them, self-extracted.

There are guerrilla armies that make little boys kill their own families. Such acts rip out the soul and make space for beasts to grow inside. Armies need beasts, don’t they? Pet beasts, to do their terrible work!

She had been innocent once, a little girl playing with feathers on the floor of a devil's lair. She wasn't innocent now, but she didn't know what to do about it. This was her life: magic and shame and secrets and teeth and a deep, nagging hollow at the center of herself where something was most certainly missing.

Soon, everything else would come rushing at him. Like the ground to a falling man, it would come rushing up and hit him all at once - the place, the company, her words; one implication would lead to another and shatter him - but around that intake of breath the world hung silent and bright, so bright, and Akiva only knew this one thing, and held on to it and wanted to live inside of it and stay there forever. Karou was alive.

We are the beginning ... We always have been. This time, let it be more than a beginning.