And then you came along and you spoke to me and nobody had looked me in the eye for years. (...) But I remember you that day and you looked at peace with yourself and it made me reconsider everything I had planned to do. Because I thought to myself, you can't do this to her, not after the Hermit thing." "Do what to me? I don't think leaving me on that platform would have changed my life, Griggs," I lie. "You being on that platform changed mine.

It’s all a bit of a gamble, mate. That’s all I can promise you. And we never get to see what that other life would have looked like if we don’t take chances.

Do you want to know something about tyrants? When faced with death, they weep and they beg just like the rest of us.

He bursts out laughing. It's short, as if he regretted allowing me to make him laugh, but the satisfaction's already mine.

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.

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.

Just ask how I'm feeling, I want to say. Just ask and I may tell you. But no one does.