Karou saw them with her human eyes, this army she had rendered more monstrous than ever nature had, and she knew what the world would see in them if they flew to fight the Dominion: demons, nightmares, evil. The sight of the seraphim would be heralded as a miracle. But chimaera? The apocalypse.

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.

It was brave," countered Issa. "It was rare. It was love, and it was beautiful.

She stabbed him in the armpit, deep, and he dropped his sword. And died. So that's what is feels like, she thought as her boldness gave away to trembling. It feels awful.

Then there were things-- epic, terrible things-- that he didn't tell her but skirted around, like caressing the edges of a wound, hesitant, testing for pain.

It seemed she was in a cathedral—if, that is, the earth itself were to dream a cathedral into being over thousands of years of water weeping through stone.

In all that was to happen, there would be that feeling of inevitability and rightness, and the sense that the universe was conspiring in it. It would be easy.