...something was starting to take shape, out of magic and will. Smoke and bone.

Don't I deserve to finally be free of you?

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.

A wave of weariness took him. How could life be so unrelentingly ugly?

Where am I and doing what? You might well ask. Freaky chick, you say? You can't imagine. I am priestess of a sandcastle in a land of dust and starlight.

Humanity, perhaps, that quality of benevolence that humans have, without irony, named after themselves.

Light coursed through Karou and darkness chased it-burning through her, chilling her, shimmer and shadow, ice and fire, blood and starlight, rushing, roaring, filling her.