His secret name, which belongs to me, and to him, and to no one else.

Less than a month ago all of August still stretched before us - long and golden and reassuring, like an endless period of delicious sleep.

He Is looking at me through the smoke, across the fence. He never takes his eyes off me. His hair Is a crown of leaves, of thorns, of flames. His eyes are blazing with light, more light than all the lights in every city in the whole world, more light than we could ever invent If we had ten thousand billion years.

There's still always the possibility that I've gone totally, clinically cuckoo. But somehow I don't think so anymore. An article I once read said that crazy people don't worry about being crazy - that's the whole problem.

If Cassie was invalidated because she caught the disease, or because Fred suspected her of it, I can only imagine what he will do to me and to my family if he discovers that the cure did not work perfectly.

Life isn't life if you just float through it.

That is the rule of the Wilds: You must be bigger and stronger and tougher. You must hurt or be hurt.