As I walk back to the school on my own, I realise I'm crying. So I go back to the stories I've read about the five and I try to make sense of their lives because in making sense of theirs, I may understand mine.

Be prepared for the worst, my love, for it lives next door to the best.

You’re going to have to learn to ride a horse on your own, Phaedra', he said. 'It will make the journey faster.' 'The mule and I have an agreement.' 'The mule and you have similar traits.

Why are you smiling?' Gargarin asked Froi, from across the balconette. 'When you're going to have to learn a lesson in diplomacy today and choose between the gardens of two women?' Froi laughed, his chin resting on Quintana's head, his eyes taking in the joy of his son, despite the ridiculous cap that covered the babe's head. He looked across at Lirah and Arjuro and Rafuel, and then back to Gargarin who was smiling himself, because he knew the answer to his own question. 'Because today, I think I'm leaning on the side of wonder.

For reasons he couldn’t understand a sadness came over him and it was then he saw the girl standing on the other side of the dirt road, her eyes pools of absolute sorrow, her light brown hair glowing in the splinters of sunlight that forced their way through the trees.

Her voice whispering love soothes him. They'd never done that before. Weren't that type of family. Except now he doesn't know what kind of family they are. What word is it that can define them? What would they call his family in the textbooks? Broken? He comes from a broken home. The Mackees can't be put back together again. There are too many pieces of them missing.

He knows no other way but ugliness,” Sir Topher said quietly. “He was taught no other lessons but those of force. His teachers have been scum who live by their own rules. No one has ever taught him otherwise.” “Am I to forgive?” she said, her voice shaking with anger. “No,” he said sadly. “Pity him. Or give him new rules. Or put him down like a wild animal before he becomes a monster who destroys everything he encounters.