It was Kizzy's first kiss and maybe it was her last and it was delicious.

It's like all my life I've been this tower standing at the edge of the ocean for some obscure purpose, and only now, almost eighteen years in, has someone thought to flip the switch that reveals that I'm not a tower at all. I'm a lighthouse. It's like waking up. I am incandescent.

As far back as she could remember, a phantom life had mocked her with its impenetrable “something else,” but now it was the opposite. Here, in the circle of Akiva's presence, even as they spoke of war and siege and enduring enmity, she felt herself being drawn into the warm absoluteness and rightness of him, like he was both place and person and, contrary to all reason, exactly where she was supposed to be.

Around Mik, my powers desert me. I lose basic motor function, like my brain focuses all neural activity on my lips and shifts into kiss preparedness mode way too early, to the detriment of things like speech, and walking.

She tried to pray, but she had only ever prayed at night, and it seemed to her that the moons made poor protectors when angels chose to hunt by day.

...I crave a shawl." He was tense with anger but his hands remained gentle at her waist. He said, "I can make you a shawl." She cocked her head. "You knit? Well. That's an unusual accomplishment in a soldier.

Cesky Krumlov, the little jewel box of a city in southern Bohemia.