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

"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."

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.

She had said she didn't feel fear, but it was a lie; this was her fear: being left alone. Because of one thing she was certain, and it was that she could never love, not like that. Trust a stranger with her flesh? The closeness, the quiet. She couldn't imagine it. Breathing someone else's breath as they breathed yours, touching someone, opening for them? The vulnerability of it made her flush. It would mean submission, letting down her guard, and she wouldn't. Ever. Just the thought made her feel small and weak as a child.

I was going to say the beginning is the good part, when it's all sparks and sparkles, before they are inevitably unmasked as assholes.

Madrigal sniffed herself. "I'm almost sure I don't smell." "Maybe not, but between shining cleanliness and not smelling, there is a vast gray area.

Dead souls dream only of death. Small dreams for small men. It is life that expands to fill worlds. Life is your master, or death is