Couldn't Lissa have healed that black eye away?" "Its a badge of honor. Makes me seem manly.

She snuggled back under the blanket with me, turned toward me so that she could rest her head on my chest. “I hear your heart,” she said. “Do you check every once in a while, just to make sure I’m not undead?

She felt so much emotionally, she would say, that a physical outlet - physical pain - was the only way to make her internal pain go away. It was the only way she could control it.

Is it true? You had a clean getaway and risked it all for me?" I Swallowed. "It wouldn't have been a clean getaway without you.

We can't stop living because other people are dead.

Even I make mistakes." I put on my brash, overconfident face. "I know it's hard to believe—kind of surprises me myself—but I guess it has to happen. It's probably some kind of karmic way to balance out the universe. Otherwise, it wouldn't be fair to have one person so full of awesomeness.

It matters to me. That's what you don't get. You can't understand. You can't understand what it's like knowing what I did. That whole time being Strigoi...It's like a dream now, but it's one I remember clearly. There can be no forgiveness for me. And what happened with you? I remember that most of all. Everything I did. Everything I wanted to do.