I'm afraid they're in love," he said, concerned. "They don't want to leave you." He lifted one hand from her waist to gently brush a pair from her neck, where their wings fanned against her jaw. Melancholy, he said, "I know just how they feel.

A thousand things might have stopped me from being here right now, but instead, a thousand things brought me here.

"Death," said Akiva. His life was leaving him fast now that he no longer held his wound. His eyes just wanted to drift closed. "I'm ready." "Well, I'm not. I hear it's dull, being dead." She said it lightly, amused, and he peered up at her. Had she just made a joke? She smiled. Smiled. He did, too. Amazed, he felt it happening, as if her smile had triggered a reflex in him. "Dull sounds nice," he said, letting his eyes flutter closed. "Maybe I can catch up on my reading."

When it turned out that he could, Karou dropped to her knees to genuflect. "Gods of math and physics," she intoned, "I accept your gift of this clever fair-haired boy

Thank you to the world for being a wild and inspiring place, full of odd creatures, strange people, and mysterious cities. I hope by and by to know you better.

Take up a weapon and you become an instrument with as pure a purpose as the weapon itself: to find arteries and open them, limbs and sever them; to take what is alive and deliver it unto death.

He wanted to tell her that everything he had done he had done because he was broken, because watching her die had destroyed him, but there was no way to say it that didn’t sound like he was trying to pin the blame outside himself