Sophia got up, taking one last look at the extraordinary daughter Councilor Nikita Duncan had borne.

I will love you until the day they put me in the earth.

He didn't know what else to do, how to comfort her, so he simply held her, held the only person in the world who had ever cried for him

A long-dead angel who thought to own me,” was his enigmatic answer, the silver in his eyes almost liquid. “I tore out his throat. After that, I ate his liver and his heart. The remaining internal organs weren’t as tasty so I gave them to his other creatures.” Elena’s hand tightened on the handle of the knife, conscious Naasir carried gleaming blades of his own in the sheaths strapped to his arms. “I wouldn’t think a vampire who killed an angel would be permitted to live.” A slow, feral smile. “I didn’t say I killed him.

When you want something so bad it hurts,” he said quietly, “and you bury it, bury it so deep that you convince yourself it no longer matters . . . and someone tells you you can have it, it's terrifying. What if you take the chance and you're wrong? What if you let yourself feel the loss and it's this huge pain and you can't put it back in the box?

Mercy laughed. “You have to excuse them—boys suffer from an incurable disability.” “What?” “Testosterone.

She was more than willing to let him walk off his temper. And the man had one, even if he wasn't willing to admit it.