And yet, something tied them together, strong than any of that, something with the power to conduct her blood and breath like a symphony, so that anything she did to fight against it felt like discord, like disharmony with her self.

Rapture cults had packed their suitcases and were massing together in great vigils, waiting for the end. "All bogus," she'd told Zuzana. "Just a bunch of crackpots waiting for the Apocalypse." "Because, fun, right?" Zuzana rubbed her hands together in mock glee. "Oh, boy. The Apocalypse!" "Right? I know. How much does your life have to suck to want the Apocalypse?

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

Kizzy wanted it all so bad her soul leaned half out of her body hungering after it, and that was what drove the goblins wild, her soul hanging out there like an untucked shirt.

War is all we've been taught, but there are other ways to live. We can find them, Akiva. We can invent them. This is the beginning, here." She touched his chest and felt a rush of love for the heart that moved his blood, for his smooth skin and his scars and his unsoldierly tenderness. She took his hand and pressed it to her breast and said, "We are the beginning.

For the way loneliness is worse when you return to it after a reprieve—like the soul’s version of putting on a wet bathing suit, clammy and miserable.

Being near her was like balancing on a tipping world, trying to keep your footing as the ground wanted to roll you forward, hurl you into a spiral from which there was no recovery, only impact, and it was a longed-for impact, a sweet and beckoning collision.